[aclug-L] Re: I am a smeghead (Letter of apology)

[Greg House <ghouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 19 Apr 1998, you wrote:

> I think the reason that many of the people think that ACLUG does not cater to
> newbies is because it doesn't really. I see that the reason may be that you
> all (original ACLUG) started out together as mostly newbies. Those newbies
> have now done one of 2 things, 1) become gurus (or experenced users at least)
> 2) left.

I still see lots of questions on the discussion list that sound like
newbie-type things. I don't think that all the inexperienced users have left.
And I don't think that those of us that have been around a little longer have
all become gurus. I sure haven't. I've gotten better, but nowhere near guru
status.

> It problably started out where you were "all" newbies who started moving on to
> a little more advanced items, and a little more, until now where either
> newbies learn very quickly(as I have done), or leave.

When I started, a couple of years or so ago, I was a total newbie. I'd
installed Linux a couple of times, trying different distributions, but still
hadn't gotten a system fully functional. Some of the meetings I went to were
way over my head, but they always sent me home thinking, with some notes to go
study things about. I'd come home read some HOWTOs, man pages, or maybe some of
an LDP doc and things would make more sense. I never felt like anyone demeaned
me for being a newbie. In fact, people were generally very helpful.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean ALL my questions got answered. There were a
couple I asked that were never answered by the group. I always figured this was
because they dealt with something that nobody had any experience with. If
someone asks something on the mailing list that I don't know about, I don't
answer (rather then writing back and saying that I don't know about it, that
seems like a waste of bandwidth). If I see a question that hasn't gotten
answered in awhile, even if I don't know the answer, I may respond with some
additional questions or directions that someone might look to try and find the
answer themself. I'd appreciate it if someone did that much for me.

> I think that a sister group that starts with basically all newbies and starts
> working up might be a good idea, and if some of the gurus drop in to give
> presentations sometimes, then all the better. But, it should basically be a
> seperate group whose members  organize things and go on their own voyage of
> discovery. The ACLUG should try to recrute as many people from the community
> as possible, and get them together and let them go on pretty much their own.

I don't personally think this is a very good idea. Going to a group where
NOBODY knows the topic at hand very well isn't going to help anyone learn it.
I've learned a lot by going to the ACLUG meetings and reading the list because
there are so many people here that have good experience that I can learn from.
If everyone was where I was at, it might be a nice social group, but for the
purpose of education, it would be limited.

I haven't been to the meetings in quite awhile, since Monday & Tuesday nights
have gotten very busy for me, but I never noticed the meetings being unfriendly
to new users. In fact, the Q&A sessions for the half hour before the meetings
were usually pretty interesting when I was going. Have things changed?

Greg


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