At 21:21 +0200 on 04/12/1999, Ira Abramov wrote:
>well, it appears "the list" hates Hebrew, "the list" hates newbies, and
>"the list" hates moving it's butt. that's why people quietly sneak and
>arrange the Haifa Club and "unauthorized" forums. it's the most
>rediculous situation for a LINUX group I can think of!
My two cents on the whole situation. First, where I come from: I'm a
complete linux newbie, in that the only thing I've bothered to do in
linux so far is to install it and add a non-root user... I'm here
more for the community value and especially for fishing for any
information about Hebrew as it comes along.
I have done some unix sysadmining in my time, and I'm a regular
participant in the Postgres mailing lists, as well as several other
technical and non-technical mailing lists.
The problem starts with the web site, and continues with the list.
The web site has no content. As simple as that. And it's not in
Hebrew. Consider the linux user of the future. It is not the sysadmin
of today... It's probably a 16 years old guy/gal with a bit more
technical aptitude than his peers. They *have* to have Hebrew.
>I'm going to get a site designer to give a new look
>to the site, and reorganize the info on it as much as my time will
>allow.
Ah, don't. It's not the way the site looks. Don't add bombastic
graphics. I didn't see that it did much good for the Postgres site.
What did it good was organizing the information better, and having
real content in the first place. It's inconceivable that an Israeli
lug site doesn't have anything more about Hebrew than a few links.
Some of them are outdated, by the way. I suspect that even without
Eli's software, one can still have instructions on how to install
Hebrew web fonts (I did it, actually, now that I think of it, using
the outdated instructions at Snunit, and my unix experience, which is
a benefit not every newbie has). The installation of a Hebrew
keyboard layout that will enable people to fill forms in the web is
probably a manageable piece of information.
The rationale behind all this is that a person feels that a computer
system is usable if he can sit down by it, use a dialer, and get on
the Internet to read his favorite web sites. This probably also
requires the urgent translation into Hebrew of the most up-to-date
information on ISP hookup/PPP usage. Accompanied with the scripts.
To summarize for now:
- Put more content (as opposed to fluff) on the web site.
- Realize that Hebrew is the language of Israel, and that the people you are
aiming at are young people. Even university students, if my memory
serves me right, try to avoid using English and *pay* people to translate
articles for them.
As for splitting the mailing list: I know such a thing was supposed
to be done in the Postgres lists. We usually get many "I tried to ask
on the newbies list and nobody could answer". I think this was not a
successful attempt. If anything should be split off the main list
it's probably the too-technical list. Let's say, a sysadmin list. All
the moderately technical members, or the willing-to-help-newbies
experts, should remain on the main list.
Or we could do a web forum in Hebrew. Eli is right that the whole
thing should be done in Hebrew, and that there is a problem in
standardizing Hebrew on e-mail. The problem with a forum, however, is
that it is a pull rather than push model. This means that people who
do not need help at the time are less likely to visit the forum,
which statistically means that there will be more people with
problems, questions, and issues they want to raise, and less experts
with solutions, answers, and recollection of previous issues
raised... That's why the forums die.
One last remark: as a rule of thumb, don't let a user group be
organized or managed by sysadmins. They are too busy and have very
little patience as a rule. The sysadmin lists I've been on have had
the same set of strict rules that this LUG list has. This is not
supposed to be a sysadmin list.
Herouth
--
Herouth Maoz, B.Sc. Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HOME PAGE: http://telem.openu.ac.il/~herouth/personal/
Internet technical assistant Open University, Telem Project
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