Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 07:17:34 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: David Marsh <drmarsh@bigfoot.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: self-help [was: FreeBSD Newbies FAK] Message-ID: <19980727071734.09104@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.980726205305.drmarsh@bigfoot.com>; from David Marsh on Sun, Jul 26, 1998 at 07:21:58PM %2B0100 References: <19980724103351.13100@welearn.com.au> <XFMail.980726205305.drmarsh@bigfoot.com>
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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*-
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