From owner-freebsd-newbies Tue Feb 16 22: 1:39 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from phoenix.welearn.com.au (phoenix.welearn.com.au [139.130.44.81]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C89C10EE2 for ; Tue, 16 Feb 1999 22:01:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sue@phoenix.welearn.com.au) Received: (from sue@localhost) by phoenix.welearn.com.au (8.9.1/8.9.0) id RAA25170; Wed, 17 Feb 1999 17:01:23 +1100 (EST) Message-ID: <19990217170117.03714@welearn.com.au> Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 17:01:17 +1100 From: Sue Blake To: Christopher Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: i am time limited but would like to help on an intermitent basis on whatever. References: <000101be5a28$fc8c5700$d0042399@chrisyor> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88e In-Reply-To: <000101be5a28$fc8c5700$d0042399@chrisyor>; from Christopher on Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 09:52:36PM -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, Feb 16, 1999 at 09:52:36PM -0600, Christopher wrote: > would love to help but can't guarantee any certain amount of time to > set aside for it but if you have some long term pooled project i > would love to help Good on you, Chris! It's important that you pick something you enjoy doing, especially if your time is short. If you don't know much about FreeBSD there's still lots of ways to help. Here's a few ideas: Join the FreeBSD Documentation Project. All you have to do is subscribe to the freebsd-doc mailing list, which is very low volume. Offer your services to review documentation that others write. Look over the Handbook and FAQ and see if there's anything missing or that doesn't make sense to you. Have a go at writing little bits to submit, then get feedback from the freebsd-doc group. If you're a newbie, your ideas about documentation are valuable, even if you can't provide documentation yourself. Hang around here and help other newbies find the documentation or mailing lists that they need, or just make them feel welcome. Subscribe to freebsd-questions and help out there if there are areas where you have knowledge to share. A lot of newbies rely on freebsd-questions when they get stuck, and sometimes it takes another newbie to explain it just right. Tell your friends about FreeBSD, give them your old CDs so they can try it out, join a users group if there's one nearby. Look out for typos as you read through the man pages. A lot of this has been done over the last few months, but it's amazing how those little glitches can hide unseen until a fresh pair of eyes comes along. Learn to use diff and send-pr to make and submit quick minor corrections. Write an article for Daemon News or the FreeBSD ezine or a good FreeBSD article for any on line or hard copy publication. Subscribe to freebsd-advocacy and share ideas. Hang around on the IRC channel #freebsd on undernet. There's always people there to help or be helped by or just to enjoy each other's company. Use freebsd-newbies to discuss other ways that you and others can help. A lot of people have discussed ideas here in the past, and while some have created a lot of enjoyable noise and not ammounted to much, others have been very successful. I think it's important that we be free to "brainstorm" without too much scrutiny or commitment because it can take a bit of dislodging to get the very best ideas flowing and enthuse others. When you do something new or exciting like setting up your first network, installing FreeBSD for a friend, or learning how to reboot properly for the first time, tell us about your ups and downs, gloat about your victory. It's always nice to discover that someone else out there has had similar adventures and here we can relate to even the most minor victory on a social level. On the other hand, if you want to write down what you did and how you did it, that would be better as a piece for the documentation project (above) or an ezine article (also above) or both. If you're busy, a lot of the above ideas involve thinking that can be done in odd moments like when waiting for a bus or during TV commercials. Another way you can help is to give us more ideas of how we can help :-) -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message