[gentoo-dev] Gentoo Classes, a possible new method of spre..

R Hill wrote:
> Dan Meltzer wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am a frequenter of #gentoo-*, as many of you know
>>
>> Tonight, hanging out in #gentoo, I observed a huge amount of incorrect
>> information once again.. tonight about profiles, cascading and all
>> that jazz, which to be honest is fairly undocumented. I decided to
>> give a miniclass on how it worked. ferringb and antarus sat in, and
>> it was just an off the cuff information/QA session.
>>
>> Okay, so that worked, but then I got to thinking, why not do these
>> fairly regularly? I do not profess to know enough to hold them about
>> a large amount of topics, but I think this could surely supplant the
>> current documentation process. Here is basic rundown and example.
>>
>> Developer A decides to speak about a specific aspect of portage, the
>> discussion is announced on lists and in gwn a week or so in advance.
>> The discussion could take place in a channel such as #gentoo-class,
>> and logged. The developer would cover it as he saw fit, and then have
>> a Q/A period after. The entire class is logged, and added to the
>> website on a publically accessible page. If the docs team thinks its
>> a useful subject, they could translate into a more formal page, and
>> use the logs for reference, if not, it would still be availible
>> information to anyone wishing to read it.
>>
>> My thoughts are this would be best suited to Gentoo-specific things,
>> portage, gentoo's infrastructure, baselayout, anything else
>> ideosynconatic (sp?). But, I suppose it could be on anything if the
>> developer so wished.
>>
>> Ideas? thoughts? comments?
>>
>> Lets hear em
>
>
> I think quick-basics tutorials like this would be a great addition to
> GWN, but if the IRC Q&A format works then I say go for it.
>

The problem with tutorials is you get a limited view of the one or two
people writing it. At least with the IRC Q&A you get some "real world"
questions. Granted, I wasn't too impressed with the first gentoo-class
that was held, but it was horribly impromptu and there were only 7 people

Alec Warner (Antarus)
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R Hill posted <di7edr$otf$1@sea.gmane.org>, excerpted below, on Fri, 07
Oct 2005 21:28:58 -0600:

> Dan Meltzer wrote:
>>
>> Tonight, hanging out in #gentoo, I observed a huge amount of incorrect
>> information once again.. tonight about profiles, cascading and all
>> that jazz, which to be honest is fairly undocumented. I decided to
>> give a miniclass on how it worked. ferringb and antarus sat in, and
>> it was just an off the cuff information/QA session.
>>
>> Okay, so that worked, but then I got to thinking, why not do these
>> fairly regularly? []
>>
>> Developer A decides to speak about a specific aspect of portage, the
>> discussion is announced on lists and in gwn a week or so in advance.
>> The discussion could take place in a channel such as #gentoo-class,
>> and logged. The developer would cover it as he saw fit, and then have
>> a Q/A period after. The entire class is logged, and added to the
>> website on a publically accessible page. If the docs team thinks its
>> a useful subject, they could translate into a more formal page, and
>> use the logs for reference, if not, it would still be availible
>> information to anyone wishing to read it.
>>
>> My thoughts are this would be best suited to Gentoo-specific things,
>> portage, gentoo's infrastructure, baselayout, [but it could be on
>> anything a dev wished].
>
> I think quick-basics tutorials like this would be a great addition to
> GWN, but if the IRC Q&A format works then I say go for it.

What about asking in GWN for classes the users would like? Start a
question submission que, then have the GWN editors select the common ones
they like and ask appropriate devs if they want to do a presentation.

Depending on interest, a few weeks after the original request for class
requests, they could start, once a week or once a month. Announce the
subject a week ahead, then if a dev wants to have the original class in
IRC, do so, or he can just create a presentation to be featured in GWN.
If it's originally on IRC, the (cleaned up/edited) log could be featured
in GWN that way as well.

In either case, the initial class/tutorial would be mostly
non-interactive, as presented in the GWN writeup. However, when
presented, an announcement would be made as to a date/time for a Q/A
session on IRC, a few days later. Questions could be submitted thru a
link (email or whatever) for a couple days after the GWN presentation as
well, with selected submissions covered in the IRC session as well. Then
the IRC session would be posted the following week. (Thus, original
tutorial/presentation one week, a couple days for Q submissions b4 the
scheduled IRC Q/A session (and a day or two to go over them, if desired,
depending on how the scheduling and deadlines are worked out), then a
couple days to clean the log from it up and address any other submitted
questions if desired, for the GWN followup coverage a week after the
initial presentation.)

This would cover the timing issue of a scheduled IRC session, plus have
the advantage of multi-format, for those who don't do IRC, plus give folks
a couple days to come up with questions after the original presentation.
The initial presentation probably wouldn't need IRC's interactivity
anyway, but it would preserve that element in the QA session. Coverage
would be far wider as well, given the GWN coverage in all its forms (LWN
coverage, Gentoo site front page billing, the mailing list, in addition to
any proposed "class" site).

Subject known ahead, original lecture, Q/A and interactive lab session
a few days later, review and followup a few days after that at the next
lecture period, similar to a Uni class with a weekly lecture and separate
lab, except that it would bypass the scheduling difficulties of an global
internet-wide "university".

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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Hi,

Your idea has its points, but I'm not sure if classes aren't just a work-around
for lacking documentation in general. Of course, IRC is a lot more interactive
than a tutorial, but reading IRC logs is really not the best method to lern
something about a certain topic, so documentation would be needed anyway, except
for those who are actually there. But then, why not just give them the
documentation right away with a "Questions/Feedback to blah.TakeThisOut@whatev.er" footer? I
think this is a far more efficient way to let people educate themselves. So
basically, the documentation shouldn't be the primary location to get information.

Other than that, i like your idea, and surely won't stop you

Regards,

--
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb.TakeThisOut@gentoo.org
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Simon Stelling wrote:
> So basically,
> the documentation shouldn't be the primary location to get information.

s/shouldn't/should

I really shouldn't write emails before waking up :/

--
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb RemoveThis @gentoo.org
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gentoo-dev RemoveThis @gentoo.org mailing list

On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 11:34 +0200, Simon Stelling wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Your idea has its points, but I'm not sure if classes aren't just a work-around
> for lacking documentation in general. Of course, IRC is a lot more interactive
> than a tutorial, but reading IRC logs is really not the best method to lern
> something about a certain topic, so documentation would be needed anyway, except
> for those who are actually there. But then, why not just give them the
> documentation right away with a "Questions/Feedback to blah.DeleteThis@whatev.er" footer? I
> think this is a far more efficient way to let people educate themselves. So
> basically, the documentation shouldn't be the primary location to get information.

I think that the best thing to do would be to put up a web page with
some documentation or a topic outline and then schedule a Q&A on IRC and
maybe in the forums too. There are a lot of topics that aren't
documented that well. What we really need is to find what topics people
are interested in learning more about.

> Other than that, i like your idea, and surely won't stop you
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Simon Stelling
> Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
> blubb.DeleteThis@gentoo.org
--
Tres Melton
IRC & Gentoo: RiverRat

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