Kinda true. Also, if (more like when) the forums become really popular and crowded, even the best-intended newbies will be lost under the 100's of results they get for a particular search and might end up re-posting anyway.
Of course, a FAQ is never a bad idea, but i have a more radical idea: something in the style of yahoo answers. The newb comes, asks, someone answers, newb is satisfied, thread is closed, helper gets karma. This way pretty much everyone is satisfied: newbs get detailed help (instead of 'search the forum for ____", get "here's the link to ___"), active helpers get karma, community is helpful (which matters a lot when buying into anything with a 'net community). It may be a good idea to remove threads that are duplicates, to clear up clutter
It would probably need some tinkering with the site, to accommodate for users being able to close their question threads, thus automagically also giving thanks/karma to helper. But i think i would work well. And maybe a brainstorm would be more helpful

My brainstorm solution is pretty much this, see: http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...ter_on_posting

How about starting a site that doesn't cater to developers and their associates but to regular users? It could be called... InternetTabletTalk!

Hmm, it's still the way I get to t.m.o actually. But I believe it's not the solution - the solution has to be a one stop shop with intelligent, sympathetic guidance. This fits with m.o's aspirations to be #1 maemo site, and I support that.

But, I'll agree with the implicit comment that the initial impressions of anything in maemo.org are developer-oriented. That's not such a bad thing if we can route/intercept sensibly.

Yes, but.

You will soon have three distinct classes of users, not two. For high end functional types, reading white papers from technical types on topics like root or ssh is fine. But for average functional types, you will be dealing with people who don't understand what root is, have never heard of ssh, and don't care (at the moment). They will want to know how to make their new phone work with what is already installed and how to install and use apps which are in the app store.

New users probably need a separate forum and a separate wiki with a separate search that restricts its results to that forum and that wiki. I would suggest that a tab be added at the top for New Users and this pull up a page with the New User wiki and New User forum with an explanation that they should look at the wiki first and then ask unanswered questions in the forum. As questions are asked and answered in the forum, they should be added to the wiki.

This is not to say that new users will or should be restricted. Advanced users will jailbreak out of the new user area to access the panoply of maemo.org resources. But for someone coming to the site for the first time, it needs to be easier to find first timer resources.

As an example, if I wanted to use the new user section of the wiki, how would I possibly know to click on Community, then on Use the Wiki, then on New Users? It doesn't help that the Community page shows recent updates to the Wiki, the second one (at the moment) being Qt4Hildon-TODO. If a new user reads the Community page before clicking through to the wiki they will have the distinct impression that they wandered into the programmer's area they will not make it to the wiki (and I speak from personal experience).

Similarly, if the new user tries to search using the top search box for something like, "FM radio receiver" (to pick what will be a major new user question) you get three pages of results. At the moment, there is a relatively useful post "N900 and FMradio" but it starts with incorrect advice (the original poster confused the transmitter and receiver) and contains references to n900-fmrx-enabler and dmesg. For an advanced user, this is fine. For a new user, they should only see a post or wiki page that says "it's not available yet but it's being worked on."

IMHO, I would resurrect the InternetTabletSchool concept with an N900 flavor. But if you want to keep everything in one place, I would emphasize top level access and better organization of the new user information. I would also separate it as much as possible from developer/advanced user information.

I'm not sure that wikis and faqs are the place to start. The scenario I see is this:

Joe has a problem or question with his (her?) n900.
Joes types a few related words into a search engine.
Search engine directs Joe to a thread on this forum.

That's how I got here, and I think it's how most newbies will get here. If Joe is well accustomed to bulletin boards he might do a search for a relevent thread. He's more likely to post in the thread he lands up in, or open a new thread. Regardless of relevence, or how many threads on that subject already exist. (Resistive v Capacitive? Shipping date?... )

The problem is that highly technical poeple have highly tidy minds, and are likely to make some comment about using the FAQ, search engine or wiki. Joe wants a person to answer his problem, not a wiki.

I really like the idea of a sticky - or even a small subforum (of n900? vBulletin does subfora!) for newbies. I also like the idea of having a few folk who are not techie types to keep the patience and keep signposting poor lost Joes to the information they need.

That doesn't need to be people who're highly skilled: it can be those of us who've got a fairly basic grasp - and know who to ask for something complicated!

I agree with RevdKathy here..
I found these forums via googling n900 and just jumped straight in to the n900 forum. It was a week before I visited the homepage, and it didn't seem to be that relevant to what I was looking for.
The majority of new users are going to be searching around n900, so will miss alot of the other information on this site, you really do need an enlarged n900 section to keep everyone in the right place.
I only found out about the wiki from another posting in the forum, there seems to be a fair amount of information, but it is in so many different places..

There is a slight practicality issue at the moment. Only the "Developers" and favoured power users have the N900 and so if noobs were pushed into a noob forum, there would be no one that can answer the questions.

The Wiki needs to be at the top of the site, and once users get their hands on some devices it will start to get populated. Most developers are too busy to write down end user type guides.

Mike C

There are already many good places to post "startup" information for newbies, however they still are VERY basic, are not inviting at all and lack content. The three most prominent examples:

• The INTRO (Top level horizontal menu, first item on the left)
• The Talk FAQ (Top right navigation menu in this forum)
• The Wiki is not directly visible, but hidden under Community

OTOH, I like what is going on in http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_Basics
I also tried to update the wiki main page and help to be more supportive.

Let's not spend too much time discussing containers, but let's write content for the existing points of contact first...

Actually, Mike, I think a lot of the questions starting to appear are so basic that even I could answer them, if I had the confidence. True, I can recite the technical specs in my sleep... I'm quite surprised at the frequency I'm answering things like "Is there an office app" (for example) on twitter. Certainly there will be questions for which a fair amount of techical knowledge is needed. But they aren't really the problem questions.