[Asterisk-Users] FAQ, Documentation, How-to, etc

[Steven Critchfield]

On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 14:40, Ariel Batista wrote:
> I just wanted to put my .02 cents into this list and say the following.
> 
>  I am an end user! And a newbie.  Our company had a Asterisk VAR setup our
> system.
> All around the Var has done a great job. And I feel he will be installing
> many more of these systems.  We are using it as our company's main office
> phone system. Other locations will be added once I get to learn this.  It
> works 95% of the time (Work is needed to get this to 99.9 %).  But I feel
> that Asterisk community wants to keep this for tech's only.  This is the bad
> part! It's a system that is better and has many more features then most of
> the high end systems out there!  But there is a large brick holding it back!
> Which I feel we should be able to work together to get this out into
> everyones hands.

Great, you did well to get into this software. I don't think anyone
wants to keep this for techs only. You may see resistance to certain
changes for technical merit. You may see some resistance to proposed
additions due to reliability. Just because not all of us want to go
through a GUI to configure and maintain our system doesn't mean we want
it to be Tech only, just that others should remember the reasons why the
choices have been made so far. 

> Now to what is going on!  This list is a great way to get information and
> advice for us non-geeks (users)!  I am learning to configure and setup the
> asterisk system via here!  I will say that the Wiki is very hard to deal
> with as getting information out of it!  It tends to go in the wrong
> direction allot!  Some of us just don't have the time to go through it!
> 
> I too like others have been saving the emails in a folder and do search on
> it!  The google search sometimes just brings up too many of the wrong thing
> and sometimes just plain too much information.

I'm not flaming you here, but just expressing opinion. If you can't
spend the time to look through the information already provided and then
connect the dots, you should be lobbying for your VAR to come out and
take care of the problems for you. You are going to pay for the
information one way or another be it by check to your var or by time and
effort learning. This is true with all software. If your time is too
valuable for you to spend it learning, than you need to pay someone else
who wants to learn. 

> I feel that the main thing that will help new people is a real manual for
> the system.  The ones that are out are just plain un-useful!  I am glad to
> see the tags to example on the support pages which has help allot.  There
> should be a FAQ area on the Asterisk site.  This is just something that is
> expected by users.  Flamming people here is just wrong! You need to
> understand that sometimes questions are asked by people trying to fix
> something fast!

If you read the link to the interesting questions page, it addresses
those kinds of problems. You are asking a group of people who volunteer
their time to answer questions and to help build searchable knowledge in
the archive and now the Wiki. Remember that just because it is urgent to
you doesn't mean it is urgent to anyone else. Also remember that for it
to be urgent to anyone else, you normally have to pay for that support.

Please always remember that asterisk may be freely downloaded, but it
isn't free. Your time and all of our time is very valuable. 

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>