Newbie forum feedback

[masseya]

Ah, now you are getting into territory where I have a past history. There was a General Linux forum when these forums first started. I was one of a very small number of people who supported it. I wouldn't want to create it now simply because of confusion that it would create with several of the other existing forums. What happened to the General Linux forum? It kinda got swallowed by the formerly All Things Gentoo forum now called Other things Gentoo, which is where I would say your question would go if it wasn't in the Newbies forum. It makes sense to say that it's gentoo related if you have the problem on a gentoo box. How would you know that it wasn't gentoo related unless you knew the solution?

Anyhow, I think you made an excellent point that there are a very large number of people who are migrating here from Windows. I think the Newbies forum would cater extremely well to them simply because they wouldn't really know what other forum to post questions to a lot of the time.
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[aja]

I'm for abolishing the newbie forum in favour of a well-managed locked FAQ forum. I just scanned a few recent posts to "newbies" - one person posted the conted of their sshd config, another started talking about kernel optimizations. NOT the sort of thing you would expect in a newbie forum at, say, Red Hat. I think we should bear in mind that most gentoo "newbies" are, in fact, newbies to gentoo, not to linux -- and are probably qualified to judge where their post should go absent a newbie forum. When my students (who see me playing with my shiny new distro) ask about trying linux "for the first time", gentoo is not the distro I recommend - and I think our user base reflects a similar attitude amongst the community.

I'm not saying that we should in any way be hostile to complete newbies - but in that case we should be offering a more structured environment that would allow them to explore their issue in some faqs, and (once they had a better idea what was going on with their system) allow them to exercise their judgement in posting to a more topic-specific forum.

All of that probably not worth the $0.02 I'm charging...

[rac]

[henke]

Hmm. Changed my opinion agan. I have no opinion on the newbie forum (As long as there is somewhere where I can ask general Linux questions I'm happy.) I do however have an opinion on something else.

We need a FAQ. It would be nice if I could say "See section "1.3.4 Partitioning your harddrive with fdisk" in the FAQ".

I'm not sure a forum is the best format for a FAQ. I love mihochan's idea about a Wiki FAQ.

[nowhcreek]

I am a linux newbie although I have limited unix experience as a user. I have decided to try Gentoo as my first linux install (I like a challenge), and one of the reasons was the general friendliness and feel of the forums.

I liked seeing the newbie forum on my first visit and found its presence encouraging. However I do agree that the posts could be dealt with in other (appropriate) forums and would not mind seeing it removed.

Could I suggest that along with a FAQ covering the newbie questions that a posting be made specifically for newbies, perhaps in the News and Announcements forum. Here a simple welcoming note could direct them to the FAQ's and suggest that if unable to find the answer to their question they post in the appropriate forum. Attention by moderators and patience from more experienced users would hopefully make this approach succesful.

[EzInKy]

The Newbie forum should be more or less a F.A.Q that looks like a forum where the main topic is "Things you will need to know before you install Gentoo". Subcategories to include an introduction to the "man" and "info" commands, basic directory structure of a Linux box and the reasoning behind it, etc.

For those of us who came to Linux before MS started hiding Dos, simple things like mentally visualising directories isn't a problem, but it is for those who didn't. To them, mounting a disk before moving a file makes as much sense as mounting a horse to boot their computer.

Finally, I really think these "nOOb" and "lEEt' titles under peoples names is kinda childish, especially with a system as professional as Gentoo's. Further I think that these "promotion's" based on number of posts only encourages people to post more and read less. You know, a lot of folks complain about the format of the bug tracking system, but the format is what makes it all that much better, because a person has to think about the problem in a rational manner before he asks his question.

[William Abke]

There are many down-sides to having a noob/beginner forum; duplicate posts, better posted in a different forum... I still think they serve a purpose and should stay.

I have very little Linux and almost no c/c++ experience and have only been running Gentoo since sometime around May. The 'newbies' forum is the first I read every day.

It gives someone who is not sure of the source of the problem, obviously struggling for a solution to the problem and quite possibly no idea of the complexity of the problem a place to post.

This keeps those who are trying to resolve more complex networking/firewall/security issues from having to read over dozens of 'i loose my internet connection every time i reboot' or those in the Portage/Programming forum from being inundated with 'emerge -C gcc/python/perl - now nothing compiles/runs'. Not that I have removed my compiler, but just starting out it was a good thing that I did not have to reboot too often.

Also, there are many mistakes I have NOT made by reading of others troubles, which if in another forum, I may have missed or dis-missed because it did not seem relevant.

If a mod feels the post is of complex enough nature or specific enough - move it to the appropriate forum.

This also gives a 'slightly accomplished' Gentoo user a good place to start helping others with the real-noob questions.

Just my 2c.

Bill

[masseya]

[iplayfast]

[The Shadow Surfer]

knowledge base, is the most usefull thing MS made, I work in the internal sysadmin/support department in a big company, and one of the most used tools here, is MS knowledge base....... even then your hardcore, your can't know it all.....

I know that this is something that takes alot of time too bild (and mantain)... I will properly be a long time before a project like that is done, but then it's done, it will be a usefull tool for newbies as well a gurus!


I say build a MS knowledge base for Gentoo, thats something we all can use (newbies as well as gurus) and then close the newbie forum

[pjp]

I know a knowledge base (I'm dubbing it the GLKB) would be a good idea. Currently, that is beyond the scope of this thread. Any changes that occur, will occur without the GLKB. The best we can do in the near-term, would be a forum based FAQ. Ideas are plentiful, but we really need people with coding abilities. If you are seriously interested in providing work on the knowledge base:

[dunbar]

Newbies do not always know enough about their problem to know whether it is considered a network issue or a kde issue or an X issue.

Hence, Newbie forum might better be renamed "unsure what my problem is".

Any forum which endeavors to be a FAQ delivery mechanism will ultimately become posted to, so any FAQ forum should be locked, so as to ensure KISS; otherwise the FAQ forum might get all the posts about specific problems.

Relevant FAQ points of concern:
General, not specific. Man, how I hate getting into an FAQ only to see the topic ramble into the nuances of subtle irrelevant issues (like how this one needs to explain how to generate PDF versions of the document.... why?). KISS: not everyone that adds a soundcard will actually configure an 'Surreal 56.72' sound system, so a soundcard FAQ needs to be less specific.
Along the lines of how adding a nic can be as simple as this:

[pjp]

TheCoop has started a discussion about how the FAQ would work over here.
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[antik]

There must be better search engine (especially for newbies), something like google.

[klieber]

[klieber]

Folks --

Thank you for all the feedback. There have been some great ideas suggested in this thread and we'll be discussing them, as well as some other options, extensively before deciding the fate of the newbie forum.

Again, thanks for the input.

--kurt
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