Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Bboard for OpenACS non-techies?

Collapse
Posted by Torben Brosten on
Hi Ken and Ben K.,

This statement is unlikely and not accurate:

1."A board who's membership is entirely newbie will not
get their questions answered."

Newbies answer other newbies' questions (when they  overcome something another newbie has just expressed a problem with).  Importantly, less jargon is often used --sometimes resulting in clearer expressions. It is also the interest of those responsible for documentation to monitor and answer newbie questions.  ACS began with everyone as newbies in one sense or another --when the most communication explaining the system occurred.

Another inaccurate statement:

2. "Participation in the main discussion will introduce newcomers to the gurus who can help them up and over the learning curve hump."

The gurus are just as busy --or more busy-- than the newbies. They don't have time to answer the simpler questions --especially without using jargon or referring to existing docs.  Explanations in existing docs may be inadequate for them.

A newbie may give-up getting involved in a project when there is too much effort to get answers to their questions. Alternately, they may "stagnate" (not learn fast enough) to make the project valuable to them in a practical way. Importantly (from a marketing perspective), they might also view the project as expert or developer-centric, meaning that the project is created and controlled by a group of egomaniacs or show-offs who want to toot their own horns but who lack adequate interest in their groupie-newbie needs.  Professional  business-types recognize the costs of trying to use these kinds of projects centered around engineering feats --based on genius and hard work-- and therefore avoid them for "more mature projects or technologies" if lessor costing and marginally adequate alternatives exist elsewhere. [I have heard these comments made by Fortune 100 company reps about Open
ACS and other "engineering-centric" projects].

When there are fewer gurus than newbies in a community, the most efficient use of human resources involves using an expert hierarchical approach. A person may progress within the hierarchy of expertise, or starting immediately at an advanced level if the person has adequate expertise to do so.

The sooner a newbie board and an admin focused board exists, the faster OpenACS will become an open-source standard.