a way to increase participation?
Posted by Anonymous on Sat 12 Feb 2005 at 06:11
This site is a great idea. To attract more authors, perhaps it would help to allow people to submit questions they need the answers to, and advertise the questions on the front page. Then, people who think they know the answer and feel like helping out could write an article by way of explanation. The attraction? The writer is guaranteed and audience of at least one other person!
It might help to award small prizes for the most popular articles, eg a debian t-shirt or a Tux. Or, encourage the questioners to participate in writing the article - they get their answer, but more importantly, they write down the answer.
Here's a question I would like help with:What methods are there for keeping a fleet of debian machines in sync, so that all have the same packages (and same _versions_ of packages). What are the up/down sides of the method(s) you use?
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As you can see there is a questions catagory which can be used for people to post questions already!
I think it makes most sense for replies to such questions to be posted as comments to the original post - that avoids fragmentation, and allows the original sumittor of the piece to follow the responses.
As for prizes, well if ever there is money generated from the site instead of lost that could well be an option ;)
I'll answer your actually question later once I've given it some thought ..
Steve
-- Steve.org.uk
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cfengine rocks!
But installing it and configuring it can be a lot of work, I've inheritted an installation before and when it's all setup for you it's wonderful.
The best resource I've read on it has been the Essential System Administration book from O'Reilly.
Steve
-- Steve.org.uk
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Wikis are inherently hard to force quality on - as anybody can make additions, sometimes for the better and sometimes not.
I think a good medium ground would be to have something like a wiki where pieces could be voted as "complete", at which point general editting would be disabled. Still I guess that goes against the freedom most users expect from a Wiki.
The Debian Wiki is relatively noise-free and useful, but it's not aimed exclusively at new users.
Steve
-- Steve.org.uk
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The debianhelp wiki is great: the info in there is not top notch, but I've found that it points me in the right direction faster than anything else.
Also, if there's one thing I've learned from using Linux its that you can never be sure that you know all there is to know on a subject.
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