[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.
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