New Forums - section for how-tos?

[Tass]

As people are starting to get their hands on a Pi we're starting to see a lot of posts on how to set things up - monpjc for instance is providing quite a few nice gems.

I know the official wiki exists and is a great place for central knowledge, but I get the feeling it could easily become quite convoluted with all the information being posted, and not the easiest place to sift through when things really get going.

It might already be in place in the new forum (arriving.... imminently?), but would it be worth having a 'How To' forum, where Pi-owners can post their own quick how-to guides, on setting up pretty much anything they want.  It would make sense to try keep it as a "This if how to do this" forum rather than a "how do I do this" forum, but I can see it being a nice easy way to browse through a whole host of posts either looking for a solution to your problem, or looking for something new & interesting to try out.

[itsonlyme]

Seconded

[monpjc]

Third.

At least a good starting point for people to throw stuff in and link back the the Wiki. For example a HOWTO on installing and setting up a web server would point to different pages on the Wiki(?) ie, Lighttpd, php5-cgi, mysql etc

[ghans]

If you are serious about tutorials on the wiki , please use the search first  and apply the Categories on the zombie articles / already existing tuts . There is already a good template for tutorieals somewhere, which should also be re-used.

The whole Wiki effort needs some help especially in establishing guidelines.

ghans

[Tass]

OK - sounds good.  So use pre-defined templates on the wiki, with a new post with a wiki link in a new "how to" forum here.  Sounds like a good compromise.

[svrsig]

This link on the farnell site looks useful - suggest you add it to the 'how to' wiki:

http://www.farnell.com/datashe.....524403.pdf

[Jim Manley]

A forum is a place to congregate (virtually, in this case) and flap our respective jowels about whatever happens to tickle our fancy at the moment. It"s a collection of streams of (un?)consciousness with no organization beyond iffy titles that are soon ignored as discussions veer off to wherever. Finding anything specific is impossible, especially when the current software returns an entire thread that can be scores of pages long. Yes, there"s Google, but, you still get thousands of posts returned in no particular order if you didn"t happen to guess precisely the right search terms.

The wiki is the organized repository for long-term information that can be updated while maintaining the correct order. Yeah, it requires more effort than posting and means putting a bit of thought into it and all that, but, the small effort required is more than compensated for by the thousands of hours saved by others actually finding what they need in a logical order. The ability to format text around images in the wiki is also far superior to the one-dimensional flow of a thread, and auto-generation of tables of contents is a clear bonus. Please update the wiki with anything even just one other person will need, rather than just allowing it to sink into the forum abyss, never to be seen again.

[trekkypj]

*cough* Raspberry Pi Documentation Project *cough*

One website to rule them all. Community run, based on the Linux Documentation Project at its best, with HTML5 compatible media added to cater to an audience of students and educators at varying ability levels.

HOWTO - for major general topics like setting up gcc, beginning linux, setting up debian for Pi

Mini-HOWTO - for specific projects like Beowulf clusters, using Open VPN, projects, making coffee with a Pi

Wiki - Frequently Asked Questions, works in progress, crowdsourcing projects

Links - Other resources outside the repository

[ghans]

What are you refering to ?

I see no indication why this couldn"t be done on the wiki. (It has already been done ..)
Otherwise we"ll end up with the gigantic mess frambozenbier.org is. - There are only few people manging that page.
(I"m not saying that the wiki looks better at the moment , but i am not hopeless .. )

People have to understand what powerful tool the wiki is - even if we just use it as a place to point beginners to.

(The foundation knows that we want a forum and wiki migration - but they need time to take breaths first !)

ghans

[Tass]

While my initial idea was to have the tutorials here, having read everyone's posts I'm starting to think that the wiki is the right place to have the tutorials.

But, I do still think that the wiki does not have an easy-to-use browse & search function, the layout quite confusing to new-comers.

This is why a forum dedicated to how-to tutorials, linking to the wiki page.  The information stays in the correct place while providing an easy-to-browse list of tutorial.  New-comers can browse & search posts, hold discussions relating to the tutorials, etc.

[SN]

Tass - I think you"re right. But I"d like to see that subforum mostly restricted and mostly full of stickied locked threads entitled: "HOW-TO: Do some stuff" and each contains some commentary possibly with one or more Wiki links

[Tass]

Now we're getting somewhere!!

[ghans]

We could also use a list on the tutorial wiki page - but i suppose with over 15.000 users , the forum is the only right place.

About structure - few of us worked with wikis before , and elinux has only 4 admins and hundreds of users. Few of us know CSS - that"s why we haven"t enough tools to better the situation (page design etc.) .
ghans

[bredman]

We can use the wiki http://elinux.org/RPi_Guides for people who want to write short guides and who don't have the ambition to write a full tutorial.

The advantage of a wiki is that we can reorganise the structure on an ongoing basis to keep information well structured.

The wiki does have some limitations. My personal opinion is that we can use the eLinux wiki for the first year but we will soon need our own space. To be able to make decisions on future structure, we need lots of sample guides and tutorials to give us an idea of the general structures that we will need.

A forum is not a really good place to write a guide. Discussions can easily go off tangent. It is difficult to see which comments are useful or not. If any useful improvements are proposed, only an admin can edit the first post or create a tldr version.