FCM readership: are articles too advanced? [Archive]

ronniet

June 3rd, 2008, 09:41 PM

Good question.

Although we do have some (what I would call 'intermediate') articles in FCM, I still try to include really basic stuff - like when we have a series of articles (server, GIMP, Scribus etc etc) - I always try to get people (including myself) to start off with the really basic stuff then work up givng step by step instructions.

Sometimes an article comes in that's intermediate, step by step, but the reader may not know the beginner stage of that article. Unfortunately we can't get every writer to do the beginner stage in all cases. :(

All in all, it could be worse: it could be all advanced stuff that's unreadable to most! :D

nonewmsgs

August 24th, 2008, 02:53 AM

if i can make a recomendation, have some kind of rating. it's difficult to know for sure what the balancing is. like should moving a home partition be more stars because it's more advanced although only moderatly difficult?

i think it's a wonderful magazine.

deicidist

August 24th, 2008, 04:01 AM

I agree. A rating system of some sort would be perfect. Whether it be in the form of 1-5 stars, 5 stars being more advanced, or even with just a small badge that says either "Beginner", "Intermediate" or "Advanced"

A nice, small, unobtrusive graphic incorporated into each "How-to" and tutorial article could be the answer to the problem at hand. This way the new users know which tutorials are safe to try and which are somewhat tricky and need to be followed very closely.

ronniet

August 24th, 2008, 02:10 PM

deicidist

August 24th, 2008, 03:34 PM

I think some would skip it for fear of the unknown but many would read it as a form of accomplishment and personal ranking. An Ubuntu beginner, who finds him/herself doing an intermediate or even advanced tutorial will feel a definite boost of confidence in working in the operating system thanks to FCM.
As time wears on, a beginner who skipped the intermediate articles months back can go back to all those tutorials and see how far they've come since they first picked up Ubuntu and started reading FCM.

onlineapps

August 28th, 2008, 01:03 AM

But surely the reader will read through (at least) part of the article then decide for themselves whether it's safe to proceed or not?

Putting an Intermediate/Advanced badge on some articles may mean beginners would automatically skip them, rather than at least read them.

But I'm always open to new ideas, what do other FCM readers think??

I like the idea of rating articles. Better a beginner skipping an article than a beginner reading an article and complaining, "this Linux thing is too hard" and going back to Windows.

jonabyte

August 28th, 2008, 02:18 PM

Generally, no to "too advanced", I think its a nice mix of some advanced and some beginner topics.
Also, I have found some really good "beginner" articles about features/software/etc I didn't know about.

TopasPV

August 29th, 2008, 12:12 AM

ronniet

August 29th, 2008, 07:41 PM

Perhaps referring to old articles would be a good idea. This could be done by using tags. For example if you just read an article about how to setup and use proftpd the article could be tagged with "install software", "ftp" etc. These tags could link to an overview of fcm articles on the fcm website/wiki arranged by tags. This wouldn't take too much space in the magazine and the number of tags would be some kind of difficulty rating instrument saying "the more tags, the more articles should/could be read before this one is to be understood".

Just an idea...

Kinda of like a 'see also:' box in the article, and list similar articles and which issue they are in? I'm giving myself more work here! Drat! :D

Assuming I put in the badges: what would be the criteria for making an article beginner, intermediate or advanced? Or maybe a star rating for difficulty would be better? One star being beginner, three star being intermediate and 5 star being advanced.

onlineapps

August 29th, 2008, 07:44 PM

Since I'm so awesome, I already link back to older posts ;-)

Of course, the Top5 is kinda geared towards short posts, so I kinda HAVE to link to longer reviews.

Badges... tough question. You could ask Canonical's Marketing Team. Or, you could say that anything that requires terminal is automatically intermediate or higher, while anything that's GUI-only is automatically beginner. That would help somewhat.

deicidist

August 29th, 2008, 11:23 PM

Of any tutorial I've looked at or helped to create in the past, I usually gauge a user's need to find their own information out on their own.

For example:

One Star: Installing a .deb file, anything from a package manager that is found in the standard repositories. These generally have very little chance of going wrong.

Two Stars: Installing a new source to the repositories and then installing software. Not that much more difficult but it does require the user to type or copy and paste info, which opens the user up to possible errors as a single character missing from a source in the repos means the software won't be found and will confuse the user if they don't spot the error.

Three Stars: Compiling an application from source. Provided that the tarball (for example) has no errors and includes complete documentation and make file, etc... this can be pretty straight-forward. A beginner could try this sort of tutorial and learn something, but the margin for error, is once again, higher than a one or two star level tutorial.

Four Stars: Beta software. Sure they install fine and there are plenty of us out there willing to give it a try, but even an intermediate user could find themselves in a bind if enough bugs surface during it's use.

Five Stars: Well, this would be anything harder. Say re-writing a part of a script in a compiler, perhaps. Anything where the user has a very high chance of really making a mess of their system if things go wrong.

This is just one way to look at it and only one example (installing a new app). For every tutorial there will be some slight differences in approach, therefore each will need to be carefully considered before it's rated.

Another way to look at it is this:

Would I have tried this back when I was getting started?
Yes > One Star

No > Would I have made an attempt after getting comfortable enough to use Ubuntu on my own?

Yes > Two Stars

No > Would I have tried it, knowing that I may run into an issue and be forced to turn to the forums for help if things go wrong?

Yes > Three Stars

No > Would I do it after having tried similar tutorials and learning from those in the past?

Yes > Four Stars

No > Five Stars (and maybe a disclaimer if it's a real sketchy tutorial!)

Sorry for the long reply. I like to be thorough sometimes!

TopasPV

August 30th, 2008, 12:53 PM

Kinda of like a 'see also:' box in the article, and list similar articles and which issue they are in? I'm giving myself more work here! Drat! :D
Yes, this sounds good to me.

Or maybe a star rating for difficulty would be better? One star being beginner, three star being intermediate and 5 star being advanced.
I'm sceptical about using star-based ratings. This way every rating is very static and doesn't leave much space to interpret. Compared to "see also""ratings" the reader loses the possibility of asking himself if he believes he'd understand a certain article. That way he would probably just decide for articles below a certain difficulty/star level even if he knew enough about certain backgrounds being required. Especially because linux is so much about reading and finding out on your own, each user has at least some experiences different from others. So, I think, it's very difficult to find a useful rating based on an author's experience. Giving background information using "see also" articles would therefore support the user's autonomy.

Assuming I put in the badges: what would be the criteria for making an article beginner, intermediate or advanced?
As I said before, I think it's quite hard to find good criteria. Nevertheless here's another suggestion. Of course, feel free to criticise it.
- requires just a few clicks
- requires GUI background information
- requires simple terminal usage
- requires terminal experience
- should only be done by experienced users
Especially the last criterion being quite hard would underline the average ease of fcm articles.

deicidist

August 30th, 2008, 02:50 PM

Hmmmm... I think we should ask the readers... lure them into the forums and have them voice their opinions through some sort of poll. I mean we could argue what works amongst ourselves all day, but in the end it's the readers that it matters most to!

There's lots of possibilities that we could do, star ratings, badges, icons describing what the tutorial calls for (terminal use, compiling, changing details with your own, etc), or even a briefing before every tutorial.

Personally, I'll adapt to whatever Ronnie feels works for him. I like all of the ideas we've all come up with so far. Each of them works well for what we're trying to accomplish. But I think we should get in touch with the readers and get some more opinions.

ronniet

August 30th, 2008, 06:33 PM

Hmmmm... I think we should ask the readers... lure them into the forums and have them voice their opinions through some sort of poll. I mean we could argue what works amongst ourselves all day, but in the end it's the readers that it matters most to!

easier said than done I'm afraid. Most months I put an 'ad' in the mag saying that the forum (and IRC channel) are here for them to use, but most don't use them... :(

There's lots of possibilities that we could do, star ratings, badges, icons describing what the tutorial calls for (terminal use, compiling, changing details with your own, etc), or even a briefing before every tutorial.

Personally, I'll adapt to whatever Ronnie feels works for him. I like all of the ideas we've all come up with so far. Each of them works well for what we're trying to accomplish. But I think we should get in touch with the readers and get some more opinions.

The 'see also' box is easy enough to introduce, I'll maybe start using it from #17 since we already have a list of all issue contents from #01-15 on the Ubuntu.com wiki page.

The only other thing I can think of is to have (maybe at the top of the page) a little row of icons, the icons showing whats involved in the article. So maybe have one icon to say you need to use the shell in this article, one icon for package manager, one for gParted etc etc. But the problem with that is we'd need a HUGE set of icons, one for all the possibilities and all the icons would need to have the same style...

Keep the ideas coming! :)

mrmonday

August 30th, 2008, 07:02 PM

Now that I'm back from the real world...

See also, excellent idea.
Little row of icons with the type of things involved, even better idea.
Difficulty/star rating, ok idea, I don't like it though, as unless we had criteria for rating they wouldn't be consistent, and even if they are consistent then they still don't know what's involved. The icons idea overcomes this nicely.

As for getting readers on the forums and IRC, maybe we're going the wrong way about it... I for one know that my eyes glaze over anything that looks remotely like an ad, and the bits on the back page are just contact details. Maybe we should try subliminal messaging? (I had better ideas, but that required less typing... ask me what they are and I'll reply when I've got more time :P)

deicidist

August 30th, 2008, 07:47 PM

...The only other thing I can think of is to have (maybe at the top of the page) a little row of icons, the icons showing whats involved in the article. So maybe have one icon to say you need to use the shell in this article, one icon for package manager, one for gParted etc etc. But the problem with that is we'd need a HUGE set of icons, one for all the possibilities and all the icons would need to have the same style...

I like that idea. I think that as long as we had a legend near the front of the magazine of what each icon will represent no one would be confused and the readers will eventually catch on and not need the legend while new readers will find it very handy to have. I'm sure the icons could be found through Creative Commons or maybe someone could make a bunch for FCM to use.

As for getting readers on the forums and IRC, maybe we're going the wrong way about it... I for one know that my eyes glaze over anything that looks remotely like an ad, and the bits on the back page are just contact details. Maybe we should try subliminal messaging? (I had better ideas, but that required less typing... ask me what they are and I'll reply when I've got more time :P)

Well, I'm still adding to a list of articles that I'm planning to write and submit to FCM, I could easily add an XChat tutorial and walk the user through an install, setup and account creation and login to the FCM channel. That'd be a sure way to boost the number of people on IRC.

The only trouble is that'll only work once to get people to jump onto IRC, but it should be a significant number of people trying it out. After that there will just be the ad at the back. However since it sounds like the 'see also' idea is taking off for you, Ronnie, maybe we could ad a little bit to it by saying "New to IRC? 'see also' the IRC tutorial by '-IRC-tutorial-person-'..."

ronniet

August 31st, 2008, 08:07 AM

ok, people seem to like the 'see also' idea so I'll run with that for #17.

If anyone comes across a pile of icons (must all be of the same style) then gimme a shout. It'd have to have icons for the most popular apps and also things like the shell and what-not...

Well, I'm still adding to a list of articles that I'm planning to write and submit to FCM, I could easily add an XChat tutorial and walk the user through an install, setup and account creation and login to the FCM channel. That'd be a sure way to boost the number of people on IRC.

Yep, feel free to write an IRC article, but you must include KDE and XFCE in it too, same with all articles if possible. I could certainly add the KDE side of things (for the IRC article) if need be.

onlineapps

August 31st, 2008, 02:04 PM

If anyone comes across a pile of icons (must all be of the same style) then gimme a shout. It'd have to have icons for the most popular apps and also things like the shell and what-not...

Did you look into tango and Crystal?

Yep, feel free to write an IRC article, but you must include KDE and XFCE in it too, same with all articles if possible. I could certainly add the KDE side of things (for the IRC article) if need be.

That's another thing... can we include the Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu icons where appropriate? Like in the Gnome-Look article in the last issue, it should have the Ubuntu and Xubuntu icons, since they can both use the Gnome-Look stuff.

ronniet

August 31st, 2008, 03:09 PM

Did you look into tango and Crystal?

That's another thing... can we include the Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu icons where appropriate? Like in the Gnome-Look article in the last issue, it should have the Ubuntu and Xubuntu icons, since they can both use the Gnome-Look stuff.

Tango & Crystal icons would probably be the best ones to use I suppose since people would recognise them from the K/Ubuntu they are using. OR I could just use the Oxygen (KDE4) icons since they are new, shiny and look quite similar to the Tango theme...?

Yeah, good idea with the 'applicable to' idea. I'll try and make room for two little boxes (per HowTo/Review) which will give info on what type of app you'll be using (ie: won't mention Synaptic/Adept but just have an icon signifying 'package manager') and what *buntu it's applicable to. Oh, and a little key at the start of the mag, maybe on the contents page.

Any other brainwaves you good folks have for spicing up FCM? :)

fiddler616

August 31st, 2008, 04:59 PM

You have lured a reader.
What's more, you've lured a reader who's been using Ubuntu since June.
Difficulty:
What if there were two 3-or-5 star systems, which were right next to each other? One for difficulty, to be measure by time and attention to detail required, and another one for the most exciting potential failure. Running something as root is easy, but you could really shoot yourself in the foot with it. Learning Scribus is hard, but if you mess up you still have a perfectly intact system. That way a casual beginning reader (like me) would know if it was complicated just because it was a lot of work, or complicated because the wrong keystroke would bring the OS down. Just an idea.
I second having little *ubuntu logos next to articles to specify whether they're DE-specific or not. Doesn't take up much space, adds color, adds usefulness.

deicidist

August 31st, 2008, 08:04 PM

I'm really liking the *ubuntu icon idea. I run an Eee PC 701 (4G) and I am hoping to be able to write for xfce and KDE as well as gnome, but KDE4 doesn't want to be friends with my laptop and space could soon be an issue for my SSD... Worst case scenario, Ronnie, my tutorials will be somewhat limited to gnome and xfce with greater emphasis on gnome. But, hey, that's what the community is for, right? :P

I think the icons suggested will work well too as they are already familiar to most, if not all, users.

I'm adding an article to my list of things to write for FCM that should cover package managers. Hopefully all goes well and I'll be submitting these soon before I overload myself with work!

deicidist

September 1st, 2008, 05:14 AM

Okay, so I've written up the tutorial for XChat. I decided to walk the reader through installation for each package manager (terminal/apt-get, Synaptic and KPackage). But now I'm wondering... based on the quote below (taken from here (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazine/Style) - under the 'General Guidelines section) should I remove the package manager walk-through and maybe replace it with a brief list of useful commands for XChat instead?

When documenting how to install software, avoid recommending a particular package manager (such as apt-get) - instead, simply use the phrase "Install package X from the Y repository." If appropriate, include a link to a page which documents the various package managers. (copied from WikiGuide/style)

For now I've just included a link to IRChelp.org that covers the basic commands for XChat.

What do you guys/girls think would be better suited for the readers?

TopasPV

September 1st, 2008, 07:28 AM

should I remove the package manager walk-through and maybe replace it with a brief list of useful commands for XChat instead?

For now I've just included a link to IRChelp.org that covers the basic commands for XChat.

What do you guys/girls think would be better suited for the readers?

Hey there,

nice thing writing this article. I'd prefer introducing some basic XChat commands. In most cases I use to find it rather annoying to open a new web page and read through tons of stuff instead of just having a small table summarizing everything inside the fcm article. I'm not sure about everyone else's opinion though :)

mrmonday

September 1st, 2008, 09:02 AM

Hey there,

nice thing writing this article. I'd prefer introducing some basic XChat commands. In most cases I use to find it rather annoying to open a new web page and read through tons of stuff instead of just having a small table summarizing everything inside the fcm article. I'm not sure about everyone else's opinion though :)

Yeah, I agree. Linking to a page with commands is of little use to beginners, as even with explanations they won't really know why they need using, how to use them etc.

Maybe include an overview of some of the basic commands, why you'd want to use them, and how they could be useful? You can still link to irc help then, and users will have a much better idea of what they're doing.

How far does this article go? Does it include just getting to #fcm or does it go further and say how to set up auto-joins or protect your nick (with NickServ)?

It might be good to include some things like that, along with links other than IRC Help, maybe a link to the XChat specific documentation, or freenode's FAQ page?

deicidist

September 1st, 2008, 12:55 PM

Thanks for the input!

I'll add some more info to the article. Basically, I went as far as getting the user into the FCM channel, having set up their user name and navigated the network and channel lists.

I'll remove the package manager section and shorten it by adding that it's in the default repos. This way the tutorial isn't too long.

NickServ, auto-join and commands....sounds like everything the user needs. If anyone thinks I should cover anything else for the tutorial, let me know and I'll see what I can comee up with.

Thanks again everyone!

mrmonday

September 1st, 2008, 01:34 PM

NickServ, auto-join and commands....sounds like everything the user needs. If anyone thinks I should cover anything else for the tutorial, let me know and I'll see what I can comee up with.

Maybe a small section about alis? (/msg alis help) Like /list or XChats channel listing dialog, but allows you to search channels, eg /msg alis list #*buntu* for a list of all the ubuntu channels. And maybe a quick list of some other channels readers might be interested in and what they are for, #ubuntu-<country code>, #ubuntu, #myubuntuflavour etc.

Other than that, I think you've probably got everything!

:D

ronniet

September 1st, 2008, 04:10 PM

...should I remove the package manager walk-through and maybe replace it with a brief list of useful commands for XChat instead?

For now I've just included a link to IRChelp.org that covers the basic commands for XChat.

What do you guys/girls think would be better suited for the readers?

Hi, thanks for taking the time to write us some articles, I promise you they will be used and won't go to waste.

An ideal IRC article should tell the person initially to go to their package manager and give them the names of the packages they need to install. From there explain how to connect to irc.freenode.net using the various apps (xchat, konversation etc) and some very basic commands to get the user familiar with the basics.

No need to explain the ins and outs of Synaptic/Adept as we don't want to get too GNOME/KDE specific on installation of apps.

Oh, and plenty of screenshots. :D

Thanks!

ronniet

September 3rd, 2008, 08:20 PM

This is the kinda thing I'm thinking of for #17 :KS (ignore the #16 content)

* the gold star is just a section icon, each section has a different Oxygen icon.

onlineapps

September 3rd, 2008, 08:22 PM

Ronnie, love it.

deicidist

September 3rd, 2008, 11:27 PM

I'm all for it to. I say give it a try and the users will respond to it. Then we can look into it in further detail if necessary. I do think the readers will greatly appreciate the addition in any case!

TopasPV

September 4th, 2008, 02:22 AM

RobinC@Amethyst

September 4th, 2008, 02:55 PM

Sometimes it takes a while for a thread to get moving, but look at this now...

:)

Liking the 'see also' and the guide-icons (and yes, the key to icons is crucial. Worth a try to see what feedback we get.

Do we need to add more info to the article index page on the wiki?

RC

mrmonday

September 4th, 2008, 04:06 PM

This is the kinda thing I'm thinking of for #17 :KS (ignore the #16 content)

* the gold star is just a section icon, each section has a different Oxygen icon.

What, no what this involves icons? :(

Other than that, Awesome :D

ronniet

September 4th, 2008, 06:09 PM

I have section icons and a 'see also' box.

The problem now is the 'what's in the article' icons. As not all articles use specific apps.

For example, FCM#16:
server series uses webmin etc
gimp series uses just gimp
gnome-look guide only discusses a web site
create your own Ubuntu only uses one app: remastersys.

I can't find a way to put icons saying what's needed in an article as it's a bit too diverse at times. What icons would you put for the server series? A shell icon, yeah, but that's about it. Same for GIMP, it just uses GIMP. One icon per article isn't really worth making a key and what-not... :(

Ideas?...

deicidist

September 5th, 2008, 01:16 PM

What about incorporating the icons from the menu's main sections? (as in Accessories, Graphics, Internet, Office, System, etc?) That way the readers have an idea as to what the application tutorial is about.

And maybe when hardware is the focus (such as setting up an application for a server, video card or hard drive) we could include icons for that.

On the other hand, maybe just a handful of basic icons would do. We don't want to end up with so many icons that readers just end up more confused than when they started.

AstroLlama

September 5th, 2008, 03:48 PM

I also think it is a good idea, most of the tutorials on FCM will not ruin your system anyway, even if something does go wrong. If an article does, a simple warning should suffice.

mrmonday

September 5th, 2008, 06:28 PM

What about incorporating the icons from the menu's main sections? (as in Accessories, Graphics, Internet, Office, System, etc?) That way the readers have an idea as to what the application tutorial is about.

I like that idea, add in another couple of icons too for hardware/command line and it's sorted me thinks (maybe have a couple for accessories, it covers quite a broad spectrum).

ronniet

September 5th, 2008, 06:34 PM

What about incorporating the icons from the menu's main sections? (as in Accessories, Graphics, Internet, Office, System, etc?) That way the readers have an idea as to what the application tutorial is about.

Good idea but it'd mean doing that for GNOME, KDE and Xfce so I'd need three sets of icons... :(

And maybe when hardware is the focus (such as setting up an application for a server, video card or hard drive) we could include icons for that.

true, good point.

On the other hand, maybe just a handful of basic icons would do. We don't want to end up with so many icons that readers just end up more confused than when they started.

Exactly! And the more icons there are will just confuse me and cause mistakes! :D