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Re: [LUG] Are we too technical for our own good ?

 

On Thu, 10 May 2007 15:26:32 +0100
"Ray Smith" <rjsmith@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> I have always found the people on this user group to be polite, helpful,
> mindful of the fact that we are not all experts and above all encouraging.
> Thanks to you all, guys
>
> Neil Winchurst

Lest anyone new to the group forgets: we 'old hands' were all newbies
once too. My newbie antics are still in the DCGLUG archive (Sep 2000
onwards). I firmly believe that a newbie-only list is a very bad idea.
By all means delete, skip or ignore those threads that are beyond your
needs or comprehension but please do not ignore the possibility of
self-improvement. Over these 7 years, I have learnt a lot myself and as
my Debian workload has increased I have sat back recently and watched
several members grow in confidence and develop as contributors. There
was a time when myself, Simon, Alex or Neil Stone answered almost every
email. Now new people have taken on that role and the 'old timers' chip
in from time to time to reminisce. ;-)

That is an important objective of this group - to seek to encourage
GNU/Linux users to learn and solve their own problems and those of
others. Sharing starts with each newbie - a problem solved becomes
knowledge that can help someone else. A collection of problems solved
leads to an ex-newbie who is able to help others whilst still learning
more. From there, members often progress to more complex environments
(like upstream development or working within one of the distributions)
where suddenly they are a newbie all over again, learning to solve a
different set of problems.

Everyone benefits from sharing equally amongst such a diverse group -
locking away one sub-set only encourages an us-and-them attitude that
is unfair and can only act to constrain the freedom of the members
themselves.

It would be insufferably boring if every newbie stayed locked into
their own newbie world without any serious prospect of being
challenged, enthused or motivated into doing something every so
slightly outside their comfort zone. We pass this way but once - the
least we can do is seek out new challenges and strive to improve our
lot.

--


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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