Wow...judging from the load of responses to this thread, I'd say there are a
lot of people who feel passionate about it. That's terrific!
There's always a fine line between legitimate newbie questions and annoying
questions that make you scream RTFM! Let's keep in mind that we all have
some level of commitment to FreeTrade and it's in our interest to promote.
So, when someone's having problems, helping them helps us. The mailing list
is a great place to hash out unanswered questions the first time. After
that, it's probably best to politely point to the FAQ or the archives.
Specifically, let me say that Shawn has been asking questions that many of
us see as obvious and not worthy of messages to the list. Shawn, that
doesn't mean we want you to go away, we just want to make your learning
experience more efficient. Common etiquette is to search FAQs and archives
before asking a question on a list. That�s why you see people start
messages like "I�ve searched the FAQ and the archives and can�t find
anything, so how do I..."
I'm pretty sure I can change the message signatures so they also have a link
to the FAQ. I can make it clear on the home page that the FAQ is fully
editable. One bad thing about the FAQ is that you have to visit to see what
questions are hanging around, waiting to be answered. Maybe we should send
a list of unanswered questions to the list once a week.
As for FreeTrade being a toolkit versus an application, that's the direction
I want to keep going in. It solves a certain domain of problems. It's OK
with me if someone were inspired to use the FreeTrade source code to build
something more along the lines of application that's more rigid but isolates
the user from having to understand PHP (or even HTML). Actually, that would
be fantastic.
As for contributing...we all have different things we're working on. I'm
the king of over-extension. Aside from my regular job as Chief Technologist
at Clear Ink, I had been working the second edition of Core PHP Programming.
I'm writing a tutorial for zend.com. I bought a new house and am in the
middle of moving. I've been writing documentation for the PHP project.
Plus lots of other stuff. So, when Christie says she found the time to dump
a bunch of info into the FAQ, but she's not applying for the job of FAQ
maintainer...I'm happy! Good job, Christie! It's all about finding the
time to add a little here and there. Let the software be the FAQ
maintainer. It's doing a good job.
Here's my last thought for the morning. If you can't figure something out,
and it hasn't been answered in the FAQ, it's OK to use the mailing list. If
you find the answer in the mailing list archives, take the extra 10 minutes
to add it to the FAQ. If you end up asking on the mailing list, make sure
you add the final answer you get to the FAQ. Let's consider this the price
of support. I know we all can't commit to adhering to this ethic 100% of
the time, but it's an idea worth shooting for.
Leon
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