> I wonder if you or colleagues have taken a good look at what other > distros and their users are doing with regard to websites. Perhaps some > ideas may come of it? The only other ones I know well are SuSE and > Ubuntu. SuSE's online presence is also a little bitty and spread around, > largely because of the way the distro evolved before Novell took it over.
I have looked at them a bit, but I'm really hoping to get a sense of what the Debian community would prefer also. I think Ubuntu's sites, both official and third party sites, such as ours, are done very well. I know also that the "tone" of those sites seems to be very welcoming and inclusive. From inputs I have gathered this far, I would say that that tone is one of the real strengths of such sites. > > My ideal website would be one that combined the material in the really > useful http://www.debian-administration.org/ > with simpler guides for less experienced users (such as, the basics of > aptitude, how to install Nvidia/ATI 3d drivers, or the basics of > Debian-specific commands like dpkg-reconfigure or invoke-rc.d) and > forums where folks could discuss things, ask questions and point out > helpful tips like where good apt sources are. There might also be a news > section where Debian-specific items were announced or interviews run > (there is no shortage of Debian developers to interview or ask for > pieces from). Excellent suggestion. In fact, Steve emailed myself and my colleague from Debian-News to get the scoop on what we're trying to accomplish. I agree that the documentation for new users would probably be a very useful asset; I think someplace welcoming to new users would be a great idea. > > However, in my experience running a website is a great deal of hard work > and many people start to flag after three months or so. Many other > people enjoy running their own show and wouldn't want to combine into a > bigger one, other than as, perhaps, an item in a web ring. Agreed. I have worked on several projects where this exact thing happened. In fact, some of my original volunteers have begun to peter out a bit already. The web-ring idea has been suggested to me by several people. While I agree with the sentiment, I really hate web-rings. Perhaps some kind of gateway site would work? Take something like http://linuxhomepage.com as a base model with the RSS feeds, possibly some way for visitors to review/comment on the sites? > > I guess your questions are pertinent and quite hard to answer, because > there is already quite a lot of information out there even if it can be > hard to find and is divided between various sites. Good luck, anyway! > Many folks talk about doing this but few get off their backsides and > make the effort. I really appreciate you taking the time to comment. I'm hoping that with a sufficiently motived group, we can get things moving and sustained. That is one problem I have seen with some of the more established sites; they seem to have slowed to a crawl in some cases. Many people have commented to me that they had tried to contact those existing sites to volunteer to help out but either didn't receive a response or other such problems. Hopefully we can get them involved in some way as well. Please keep the ideas and comments coming; the more inputs the better. Thanks! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
