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

[John Todd]

All -
   I agree with Olle.  However, I see several difficulties:

  - getting someone to actually write the text for the revisions
  - getting someone to design the "new" site
  - administering the CVS tree, as it currently falls into Digium's 
responsibility, and they are it seems already overwhelmed with just 
keeping the code updated, much less admin'ing purely administrative 
things like HTML entries to the CVS

Any proposals for how to overcome these issues?  Any volunteers?  :-)

JT


At 9:39 AM +0100 12/11/03, Olle E. Johansson wrote:
>
>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
>