[Asterisk-Users] Newbie introduction /* New subject */

[Olle E. Johansson]

Thinking about this problem I would like to point out the root cause of all this:

              *** The Asterisk open source PBX is a success story ***

We are a growing crowd. New users keep joining the list all the time, experimenting,
installing, getting along.

Some of them are used to Open Source projects. However, some of them are not, they're
used to commercial software and need to learn how Open Source projects work, what to
expect and how to be a member of the community instead of a demanding customer.

I tried to solve some of the repeating questions by starting the Wiki, adding documentation
found on various places, adding a FAQ, an introudction...
and I keep adding stuff, as do many of you. Community documentation obviously works.
That's great.

The wiki is a reference guide. A perfect tool when you're working with something and need
to browse from EnumLookup to enum.conf, from AddQueueMember to queues.conf to agents.
It's not a handbook, that you read from start to end and learn stuff from a newbie level
up to a wizard. Alas, Leif and some others started a handbook-ng project. Perfect!
We need it.

What I would like to do now is to refresh the asterisk.org website. We need to add more
visible pointers to where information can be found, adopt it to the crowd of new users
that join our community all of the time. One special thing we have to add, is information
on how an open source project works.

Some of this is information is already on the wiki and needs to be brought back into
the asterisk.org website. Asterisk.org is the starting point for newbies. That's where
they need a friendly welcome, introduction and instructions on how to start the journey
towards being Asterisk pro's. I think changing this would lower the risk of newbies
writing messages that cause them to be slapped in their faces on the mailing list.

I would propose that we put the website into CVS, like apache.org already got. That way,
we can add diffs and suggestions to the bugs.digium.com system and, if accepted by the
CVS maintainers, update the site.

/Olle