Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 15:28:56 -0800 From: Studded <Studded@dal.net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Help! Message-ID: <350B12B8.60A902D3@dal.net> References: <8029.889873747@time.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > The only known counter to this scenario is to somehow (and no, I don't > know how we'd do it) get the new users trained early to be good with > the search engines, the sources and what web based documentation there > is in answering any questions which can be answered that way. I recently posted a pretty lengthy unatribe (not quite a diatribe :) on this very topic, copies available on request. The short version is that we have too many points of entry to the docs right now, and too many of the questions that pop up all the time on the lists don't get addressed in the static docs (like the web page). I've been giving some thought to this since my last post and what I'd really like to see is the faq and handbook merged into one well written handbook, and a "How do I?" page written that takes the most common queries and pulls out the relevant sections of the handbook for the user. As new questions pop up on the lists, new sections should be added to How do I. The FAQ we have now isn't really a FAQ anymore (not that that's a bad thing). And before anyone comes up with the smart-ass response, I would be glad to work on that project. However, documentation is one of the things I do for a living so I know the magnitude of the project and I couldn't justify doing it myself if I weren't being paid for it. Not to sound mercenary about it, but I have to eat too. :) I am happy to continue working around the edges where I have time, and I would also be glad to *help* with a reorganizing project. > Despite > what one might think after observing the poor state of our docs (and > you'll not hear anyone yelling louder about that than I), my long > history of observing "newbies in the wild" has revealed that the great > majority of problems comes from a simple _unwillingness to read the > docs_. Newbies *don't want* to read the docs. Reading docs is > boring! They'd much much rather go to someone in IRC or email and say > "tell me what to do, dammit, I don't want to read no stinking docs!" > and that's what eventually kills those media - they don't scale at > high loads. Agreed on all counts. That's why the majority of questions I answer start with, "Here's how you can find that for yourself next time." Maybe a counterpart to Greg's "How to get the most out of -questions" post with some advice on how to *answer* questions might be in order? Anyway, if people are serious about addressing this problem, point me to the right forum and we can start making plans. Like I said, I'd be happy to help. Doug -- *** Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network *** *** Proud operator, designer and maintainer of the world's largest *** Internet Relay Chat server. 5,328 clients and still growing. *** Try spider.dal.net on ports 6662-4 (Powered by FreeBSD) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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