[D-community-discuss] current status / plan update

Chris Lale chrislale at untrammelled.co.uk
Tue Mar 6 00:28:56 CET 2007


Andrei Popescu wrote:
> [...]
>
>   
>>  * help aimed at newbies - perhaps a list or a forum
>>     
>
> Hhhm, I think this is covered pretty well by the debian-user mailing
> list and forum.debian.net. We shouldn't spread the community.
>   

Except that there is _no_ list aimed at beginners/newbies. There have 
been discussions on the Debian-user list that suggest that a newbie list 
will not happen on the "official" Debian list servers. D-u is 
potentially intimidating for newbies. I do not think that it would be 
spreading the community to create a list for newbies. It would be 
extending the community.

>   
>>  * documentation aimed at newbies
>>     
> [...]
>   
>
> Also, after giving it a lot of thought I think we should try not to
> split efforts. NewbieDoc is a good initiative, but AFAIU didn't get too
> far because of lack of contributors. 

Yes and no. The aim in 2001 was to get newbies to produce 
Debian-doc-style howtos using DocBook and SGML tools. It was a 
sophisticated task with a steep learning curve and just too ambitious. 
The move to a wiki has encouraged _contributors_ but not _developers_. 
By this I mean that there have been quite a few free-format articles and 
a pleasing number of other unstructured contributions. Many of these 
have been from anonymous users. But no one has wanted to write stable, 
formal articles as a NewbieDOC developer - even though DocBook and SGML 
tools are no longer necessary.

I would suggest that there are two distinct models for producing newbie 
documentation. The "developer" model is where a group of people 
collaborate to produce documentation aimed at newbies, using CVS/SVN. 
The "contributor" model is where any user (including newbies) can put in 
their particular penny-worth.

> And the hosting is also not
> top-notch. 

Yes, BerliOS has been experiencing serious webserver problems over the 
last couple of months. I am thinking that NewbieDOC might need to move 
to a new hosting service again.

> Debian-community has the chance to unify non-developer
> efforts, which I think is a Good Thing.
>
>
>   

Yes. Working together is what a community is about!


-- 
Chris.




More information about the D-community-discuss mailing list