Idea #6710: Adopt a newbie Project

Written by climatewarrior the 9 Apr 08 at 14:15. Category: Others.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

I would be great if Ubuntu set up a team of volunteers that are willing to help newbies get started.(I know this already exists in the form of the forums/irc/mailing lists etc but this is different). It would be something like this. Noob goes to Ubuntu site because he has a problem or a question and sees the voluntary tech support page. He then applies for having his own tutor for getting started with Ubuntu. Then a tutor is assigned from the already available pool of volunteers. After the tutor is assigned the contact info is given to the noob. Then they could go and chat trough irc to get to know each other and to answer all of the noobs question. Also the volunteer could help out configuring the noobs system using vnc or something like that. I think it would make some people more comfortable and it would show the power of the free software community. This only meant to compliment the other already existing forms of voluntary tech support.

Tags: (none)

Attachments

Ubuntuforums.org thread #378426

Duplicates

[Report a duplicate and merge its votes to this idea]

Comments

briceparent wrote on the 9 Apr 08 at 17:07

Hello!
The only problem i can see with that is that this kind of support just helps 1 person at a time. If it's written on a website's forum, faq, wiki or anything else, once the answer is given to one person, the others can find the answer alone.

climatewarrior wrote on the 9 Apr 08 at 17:31

That's true. But a possible solution is to encourage the volunteers to document the problem he has solved in the forums or in a wiki(preferably).

FranciscoPadillaGarcia wrote on the 9 Apr 08 at 19:58

I'm in. I can help people with normal hardware to break into Ubuntu.

Iamreck wrote on the 9 Apr 08 at 20:32

I believe it already exists on the forums.

rs3york wrote on the 10 Apr 08 at 01:27

Interesting, but do we really want new users to be dependent upon 1 person to do all of their support for them?

Just because something is, "meant to compliment the other already existing forms of voluntary tech support"...does not mean users will use the other forms once they use this one.

Many users will simply default to their "tutor" for all of their problems. It's just a multiplication of the "family/neighbourhood IT person" problem: Sure your brother _could_ look up the problem online, he could even call the official tech support (if his OS has this), but why do any of that when he knows that YOU can just fix it for him?

Once a tutor has 3+ pupils, the support requests could become overwhelming.

There's also a potential privacy issue. Do I want random users to have my name & e-mail address? Not really.

Maximus86 wrote on the 10 Apr 08 at 09:35

Very interesting idea, because with this kind of project the newbies will get personally involved with and introduced in the community, this would result in a more durable relationship with the community. What rs3york says is indeed true, but maybe we can work something out... Some thoughts: the tutor introduces the newbie to the forums and to other tutors, helping intensively with his/her first steps. When the "real" noob questions are somewhat over, the newbie could ask his/her questions in a chat "pool" of tutors, so it won't be the same tutor that helps him/her (--> so (s)he gets to know other people). And finally, as climatewarrior suggests, the tutor(s) encourage(s) the pupil to document his/her solutions along the way. That way the wikis will grow, and I'm convinced that almost all of the pupils will eventually become tutors and people that have enclosed Ubuntu in their hearts.

eyerouge wrote on the 10 Apr 08 at 13:02

The Swedish Ubuntu LoCo uses this system. Seems to work, but I don't know about their numbers..

wormser wrote on the 29 Apr 08 at 20:48

You could have classes of 10 to introduce Ubuntu and where to find resource in a Remote Meeting. The problem is Ubuntu does not have any Remote Meeting software like WebEx. Vote for a WebEx type of application here: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7487/

Post your comment