From owner-freebsd-newbies Sun Jul 26 14:18:25 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA08807 for freebsd-newbies-outgoing; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 14:18:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from phoenix.welearn.com.au (suebla.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.44.81]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA08786 for ; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 14:18:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sue@phoenix.welearn.com.au) Received: (from sue@localhost) by phoenix.welearn.com.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA18265; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 07:17:36 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <19980727071734.09104@welearn.com.au> Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 07:17:34 +1000 From: Sue Blake To: David Marsh Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: self-help [was: FreeBSD Newbies FAK] References: <19980724103351.13100@welearn.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88e In-Reply-To: ; from David Marsh on Sun, Jul 26, 1998 at 07:21:58PM +0100 Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sun, Jul 26, 1998 at 07:21:58PM +0100, David Marsh wrote: > On 24-Jul-98 Sue Blake wrote: > >On Thu, Jul 23, 1998 at 11:00:08PM +0100, David Marsh wrote: > > >One day there might be a special place to ask newbie technical > >questions. If that happens, it will not be this mailing list, it will > >be another one. > > I think that would be a good idea. > Does anybody agree or have the inclination to set up such a list? Hehe, lots do. Nobody has figured out how to make it work yet (people-wise). That's all that's holding it back, and no-one has come anywhere near a workable plan yet. Locating documents... > You'll notice that Nik Clayton didn't feel that these were necessarily > quite appropriate topics. Obviously everybody has differing opinions, and > I'm not in a position to say which is "right", but perhaps my little > examples there maybe illustrate that it's a little hard to understand just > quite what can be asked here? No-one can ever be faulted for asking about documentation here, though they might be redirected sometimes. For something basic or general, like vi, we should know about its documentation and tutorials here. For a specific application your chances would be better on -questions. See the second paragraph under "Manuals" in the FAK. It's a border-line case; nothing you did in this instance would be wrong, even though you might be redirected to others who could help better, for example to -multimedia to find information about my ancient GUS Classic. > In the case of FreeBSD, obviously the opposite occurs where questioners > aren't necessarily list subscribers, and therefore personal cc:'s become > necessary. > > I'd like to suggest that maybe the list advice from majordomo should make > this point clearer, which is different from most other lists. Good idea. Note, however, that it seems that the vast majority don't bother to read that notice from majordomo :-( > It's just that for home-users, prolonged periods of searching can end up > very expensive. Perhaps we need more pointers to easily downloadable > information [1], to save online time. I'm certainly going to check the > 'newbies' page on the website to see what it says! I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the amount of info packed into a few bytes there, but if not, do let me know. > [1] And if/when I feel I'm experienced enough, I'd like to contribute to > the 'official' documentation project at some stage. Great idea. The freebsd-doc mailing list is very low volume, just work, no idle chatter. You could subscribe there without hardly noticing it and lurk for a while. Even first-day newbies make good doc reviewers. > So it's either filter through a huge mail download or spend online time > searching: You pays your money, you takes your choice ;-) > I wish we had cheaper phone calls, and then this wouldn't be such a > difficulty! Something interesting has just come up here. A friend a couple of towns away is going to install FreeBSD on his home computer. Since he knows only DOS he'll bring his computer around for the installation, take it home, and be on his own with the manuals. He has no Internet access, no modem, so he'll sink or swim on the documentation that's provided on the CD. I suspect there's a few people in that situation in expensive countries like yours and mine, but we'd never hear about them, would we :-) That's one of the reasons why I strongly encourage documentation efforts to be put into the FreeBSD Project itself, rather than set up on a private site somewhere for "all" to use. Not everyone is "all" :-) > Just as long as the wise ones on -questions don't mind a small flood of > 'newbie' (but hopefully not 'clueless') questions from me. No problem. The more they see newbies making a sincere effort to work things out for themselves, the more they'll be keen to help. If you have read documentation and checked your configs before asking a question, let them know and it'll be easier to give you the right help. Let them know you're a newbie and they'll answer you at that level. Without sufficient background info, they're as lost as we are. > I had just thought that a degree of separation between beginner, and > more technical questions, might have been beneficial. In theory, yes. In practice, it relies on the people *asking* the questions to be experienced enough to know the difference, which is rarely the case for newbies. Some easy looking problems newbies have are real guru-stumpers! Now if we could employ someone to read every question and pass them on to the appropriate helper... but that'd be a full on 24 hour job, and we've got no funds and busy volunteers. > I understand what you mean, and at the end of the day, any such move would > rely on the goodwill of the experts. But to give an example, I'd hope that > in, say, 6 months, I'd have progressed enough to perhaps help out some of > the then newbies, while most of the harder questions currently on -questions > would still be about things I have no experience of. We all hope for that, but without an expert review system it's too risky. During my brief stint as a Linux user I was given copious amounts of advice from other users, all sounding quite expert, nearly all wrong. It took months to unlearn that stuff! On this list we've seen some people attempting to "help" who present themselves with such an air of authority that they sound absolutely correct, but what they recommend can range between misleading and downright dangerous. How do we know who to believe? The people who help on -questions would rather answer the questions in the presence of their critical peers than spend additional time correcting the effects of misinformation gathered elsewhere. > Just as long as it is appropriate to ask questions about how to get > documentation here [1], I wasn't sure if it was? > > [1] Because that is half the battle! Once you have the *right* > documentation, solving a particular problem isn't quite as bad! Exactly! For that reason, no documentation-seeking question can ever be considered naughty for -newbies, even though it might need redirecting to -questions. > But I'll bet that the experts on -questions must get *sick* of answering > that kind of question above! :-( If it's in the documentation they would find it tedious and unnecessary. That question... urk, I deleted it, about how much space on C: for downloading freebsd... I don't think that's well documented, and if I am right, ask there often enough and someone will document it :-) -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message