Re: [tlug] contribution to F/OSS community

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 11:20:26AM +0900, Josh Glover wrote:
> On 11/06/07, Jim Grisanzio <Jim.Grisanzio@example.com> wrote:
> 
> >Yes, I agree totally. Don't be hard on your English at all. It's really
> >quite good. 

I 3rd or 4th that, I've lost count.  Your English, especially with what
I see these days, is probably better than many native speakers
educated in the US.



> six guidelines have served me quite well when chatting with non-native
> English speakers (such as Australians).

That was too obvious Josh, though it did make me laugh.

There is another important contribution that you can make--whether in
English or your native language.  That is to write about what you learn.
Jonathan posted this years ago to someone--he mentioned how it always
helps others to write about what you've learned.   Often, those of us
who know less about a subject, can write something more helpful to the
beginner than something written by an expert.  

The reason is that the expert often forgets how he had to learn step one
before going to step two.   So he writes about step two while the person
reading the tutorial is trying to figure out how to get there.  

To use a somewhat artificial example:  In FreeBSD, an expert writing a
tutorial might say update your ports tree then do blah blah.  A
beginner, who has just learned how to do this, might write a tutorial
saying, use the command portsnap fetch update to update your ports tree,
then do blah blah.  This is going to be a bit more helpful to the
beginner.  


-- 

Scott Robbins

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