RE: [linuxiran] Linux teaching website

[Ehsan Akhgari]

Hi Arash,

At first, let me thank you for your criticizm.

> What I want to say is absolutely out of topic.

I don't agree.  :-)  IMO, it's quite relevant.

> But since yet
> another project and site is going to be open, I wanted to warn all
> Iranian open source fans about the situation of this from a practical
> point of view.
> Concisely, we like to talk big and plan - read dream- great things,
> but when it is time to act, Nobody is there.

I know what you're saying here.

> I am not blaming people for this. I know that, we don't have time,
> also we should remember that we got to have time, if we want this to
> go on in Iran.

Yup.

>  We already have some ten Iranian linux site, but no news/articles in
> them for days. If I was not a linux fan, you are not going to check
> every one of them every day, and it would be difficult to attract
> people with such a loose affords.

Right, but what I do about it?  I'm not trying to write news or articles
about Linux.  I want to take another step, and teach people to Linux.  I
believe that the way to attract people to Linux is teaching, not writing
about.  That's what happened to me as well.  I've worked for years on the
Microsoft Windows platform, and I'm a professional application developer for
Windows applications.  During all this time, I was hearing about Linux,
open-source, and such things everyday, but told to myself: "who cares?  I
can develop Windows apps quite merrily, and there's no more I want to do."
That was until the turn of events caused me to learn Linux.  Only *then* I
found how powerful it is, and how broader are the chances of getting your
job done with it, than with Windows.  But in all that time, no single
news/article made me *feel* this.  If they taught Linux besides Windows at
high-school, then that would help grow Iranian Linux users' community grow.
To draw people from Windows to Linux by writing about it requires a great
deal of personal affiliation on their side.  To draw them by teaching it is
just a natural movement on their side.

Persian Linux teaching is by far the least available resource on the web;
that's what made me think of this as a project.

> I want to say that do not split our very finite human resources and
> output.

No one said split -- this is just categorization.  If everyone wants to get
involved into everything, success won't be waiting us.  The best way of
utilizing the limited human resources is not keeping them tight together,
IMO.  It's dividing them in teams, and assigning them specialzed tasks to
do.  That was how the GNU/Linux OS got developed anyway.  Each sole
developer (or small team) did one part, and they tried to do it best.  The
whole OS was created only by putting everything they did together.  That's
the main philosophy between all the *nix family of OS'es.

> Let's have a good big efficient community linux site for Iran. What
> you will get from registering a name for this site?

Nothing - probably I'll even loose something because of the expenses
involved.  :-)

> What is wrong with opening a teaching section in one of these sites.
> The least we get is everybody who come to read a tutorial will take a
> look at some Linux news, and get familiar with forums.
> That is it.

Here is my idea.  I'll have a site dedicated to Linux teaching in Persian.
But I'm not going to stand apart from the rest of the Linux community.  I'll
incorporate feeds from sites which have quality content, I'll provide them
feeds of my own content as well.  This way, we syndicate our content without
cluttering different topics.  This way, we're all on one side, only covering
different parts of the field.

One of the criticizms I've always had to sites based on CMS's such as Xoops
and PHP-Nuke has been the unintentional cluttering created with them.  The
first page of these sites contains so much information that drives users
away from there, or makes is difficult for them to find what they're looking
for.  The number one rule of the web is "less is more".  Compare an Xoops
created site's main page with Google's, for example, to get a feeling of
what I'm saying.  I think that adding yet another section to LinuxIran.org
(or other sites like it) will make the new section quite invisible.  I
believe syndication and linking to valuable resources is the best way to
keep the information on the web categorized, and manageable.

BTW, contrary to what it might seem, my ideas are not carved into stone.
I'm open for changes if you can show me some benefits.  Also, I'm open to
all suggestions and comments from you (and other members of the list) who
have valuable experience in the field.

Thanks again for the criticizm,
-------------
Ehsan Akhgari

Farda Technology (http://www.farda-tech.com/)

List Owner: address@hidden

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[ WWW: http://www.beginthread.com/Ehsan ]