[lug] re: Tossing out ideas

[Wayde Allen]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, William Jarosko Jr. wrote:

> Ed Meyer wrote:
> 
> > A column wouldn't be a bad idea - but wouldn't we be duplicating a lot of the
> > existing "how-to" documents.  Although I agree - many of the "how-to's" are
> > written over my head.  A summary or "newbieized" version would be helpful
> > in most cases.
> >
> > Ed Meyer
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> > Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug
> 
> Well my whole problem with anything online anymore is the lack of meaningful
> examples, which I would hope by a column written by the local BLUG would know
> it's target audience. Man pages are great, but if you have man'd a command
> you've never seen before it can be brutal.

Fair enough, but the thing that is nice about a local column on the
mailing list is that it is interactive.  If a person doesn't understand
something he/she can ask for clarification.  Like I said before, check out
what I did a while back with my "Intro to Unix" articles on the list. 
(See the BLUG mail archives on the web site.  URL at bottom of e-mail) 
I suppose I could pull those out an run them again.  It might generate
some discussion and get peoples creative juices flowing.  

The problem with any of this though, is that someone has to create this
stuff for the rest of the group to read.  Anyone want to summarize some
command that they think is particularly important or really cool?  I'd
also be happy to try having a 10 minute or so newbie presentation on some
topic during the next meeting (Feb. 10th).  We can only try it and see how
it goes. That is all it takes - anybody?

You see, the problem with most newbie activities is that the newbies need
to ask about the things they don't know about.  Unfortunately, this lack
of knowleadge also means they don't know what to ask.  Quite often the
simplest things such as the use of the mv command are all that they need
to know.  (I'm using that as an example since I had a hard time figuring
out how to rename a file when I first started.)  This was the underlying
basis for my idea to have a "command of the week" kind of e-mail on the
list. 


- Wayde
  (wallen at boulder.nist.gov)