Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 20:03:28 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FreeBSD-Newbies first aid kit Message-ID: <19980330200328.04245@welearn.com.au>
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FreeBSD-Newbies first aid kit (29 March 1998)
This is a regular posting to the FreeBSD-Newbies mailing list.
FreeBSD-Newbies is a discussion forum for newbies. We cover any of the
activities of newbies that are not already dealt with elsewhere. Examples
include helping each other to learn more on our own, finding and using
resources, problem solving techniques, how to seek help elsewhere, how to
use mailing lists and which lists to use, general chat, making mistakes,
boasting, sharing ideas, stories, moral (but not technical) support,
promoting FreeBSD among our friends, and taking an active part in the
FreeBSD community. We take our problems and support questions to
freebsd-questions, and use freebsd-newbies to meet others who are doing
the same things that we do as newbies.
One of the things we do together is learn more effective ways to find help
when we need it. Here are some suggestions:
Mailing lists
When you have a problem or want to ask for help, there's only one support
mailing list and that's FreeBSD-questions@FreeBSD.ORG.
You don't have to actually join freebsd-questions before asking a question
there. Replies to your question will normally be sent to you personally as
well as to the list. Just make sure you have read and followed the
guidelines for posting, because you might find them different to what
you're used to. If you do subscribe to freebsd-questions you'll have the
advantage of seeing all of the recent questions and their answers.
Before you post to FreeBSD-questions, please read the guidelines at
http://www.lemis.com/questions.html
Many of the people who answer FreeBSD-questions are very
knowledgeable, but they get frustrated when they get questions which
are difficult to understand.
http://www.lemis.com/email.html is worth reading too.
If you're not sure that you can follow these guidelines, come back and
ask the other newbies for help on how to post an effective question to
the support mailing list.
Maybe your question has been asked before. If you search the mailing list
archives at http://www.freebsd.org/search.html first you might get the
answer right away. It's always worth trying.
Other mailing lists (http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook317.html)
cover specialised areas and many are more developer-oriented. You'll need
to read their charters carefully before participating, but it's probably a
good idea to ask on either -newbies or -questions for advice about where
to post a more specialised question.
Manuals
You'll always be expected show that you have made some effort to use the
available documentation before asking for help. That's not always as easy as
it sounds!
If you know what documentation you need but can't locate it, send a brief
query to FreeBSD-questions. If you don't know what you need, always have
trouble finding it, or can't make any sense of it when you do, ask some
patient newbies to steer you in the right direction.
Anyone interested in writing or reviewing documentation for FreeBSD is
encouraged to join the FreeBSD Documentation Project. Details are at
http://www.freebsd.org/docproj.html
Other resources
A resource list is currently being put together. It will include books, on
line documents and tutorials, and links to web pages that other newbies
have found useful for learning. If you have a suggestion for good material
to be included, please write to freebsd-newbies and tell us about it.
But I have seen people asking questions here!
It is quite common for people to send the wrong kind of post to a mailing
list. Because we're newbies it'll certainly happen here from time to time.
The best thing to do if you see a message that doesn't belong on a list is
to ignore it. There's always someone around whose job it is to sort these
problems out privately.
The posts to the lists go straight through, whatever their content. It is
going to be confusing for a little while because we're all newbies so we
all make mistakes. That's OK.
One thing we're going to see a fair bit is people posting questions,
believing they're doing the right thing by posting here as newbies, not
realising how it works. If someone answers those questions the situation
will snowball. There's nothing wrong with helping someone to redirect their
question to freebsd-questions, but please do so gently. There's nothing
wrong with the occasional mistake either.
So all questions, requests for help, etc still go to freebsd-questions as
usual. Ours is more of a discussion group, a place where newbies can
relax with other newbies and focus more on our successes than on our
temporary imperfection. We can talk about things here that are not allowed
on freebsd-questions. We're also a bit freer to make the mistakes that we
need to make in order to learn.
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