[LinuxKB] Re: welcome! [long] (fwd)

["Aaron D. Turner" <aturner@best.com>]

Cheek has a mail list, so I subscribed.  I figure he might come up with
some interesting ideas that we could apply. 

<lurk mode on>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joseph Cheek <joseph@cheek.com>
To: linuxkb@seattle.cheek.com
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 16:42:00 -0700
Subject: [LinuxKB] Re: welcome! [long]

hello again,

this email is a followup to the email i sent below.  for those that have
just signed up to the list, i have included the original email below.

i got a nice response to my original email.  several people mentioned ways
to help, and offered their services.  thank you for that!  all that replied
expressed an interest in furthering the available linux documentation on
the net, which i am grateful for.  additionally, two people responded by
telling me that they had built knowledge bases before, and offered to
coordinate assistance with this effort.

i have a few ideas that i am ready to push forward with immediately:

- topic moderators
- kbarticles
- expanding promotion
- testing linuxnews

topic moderators will be primarily responsible for ensuring the quality of
content in their particular area, such as the "networking - dns" area.
these people will be given some promotion on the site, such as picture of
themselves, email address, personal info, etc., or at least as much as they
are willing to reveal.  they will be responsible for adding resources to
the kb on their topic.  right now, resources are split up into nine areas:

- web sites [indexed]
- web sites [not for indexing]
- mailing lists
- newsgroups
- related kb web pages
- book references
- man page references
- subtopics
- kbarticles

anyone interested in becoming a topic moderator, please let me know what
topic you are interested in moderating.  these could be good resume
builders or professional contact makers.

kbarticles are small resources [less than 1000 words] on a very focused
topic.  they are technical in nature.  i'm not sure how else to explain
them; for a good reference just surf to
http://linuxkb.cheek.com/kbarticles/.  there are only a few of them, so we
really could use some more.  if you have ideas for more, please let me
know.

the linuxkb really could use more promotion.  i'd like to ask each of you
to place a link to a place on the linux kb on your sites.  it can be to the
main page, http://linuxkb.cheek.com/, or to a particular topic like
http://linuxkb.cheek.com/page.php?apache for apache.  for moderators, these
are a great way to promote yourself.  we have a 468x60 banner at
http://images.cheek.com/linuxkb-ad1.gif and an 88x31 at
http://images.cheek.com/kb-88x31-green.gif.  if you don't like either of
these, i can create another one 8-).

lastly, testing linuxnews is something i need help with.  the interface
really needs work, but i'd like each of you to look at it also and give me
feedback.  surf to http://linuxnews.cheek.com/ and then send me email,
please.  this came about because there were lots of times i could find
stuff from the kb but sometimes i could not, but i could find stuff at
dejanews.  so i thought i would create a "linuxnews" and integrate it into
the site.  you can already search for usenet articles, but not post yet.

more things in the future, such as troubleshooting wizards and more
documentation.

thanks!

joe

Joseph Cheek wrote:

> hello,
>
> [this is a long message, and there is some info i need from each of you,
> detailed at the end.  please do read this entire message, thanks!]
>
> welcome and thanks for joining the linuxkb list. this list is run on
> majordomo; for those that don't know how to use majordomo, sending an
> email to majordomo@lists.cheek.com with a message body of "help" for
> information on using majordomo.
>
> i've created this list to discuss four things primarily, although i will
> be open to other topics.  the four areas of interest i have are:
>
> - what ideas to cover in the KB
> - how to keep the quality of the information listed high
> - how to maximize exposure to the Knowledge Base
> - how to properly compensate those who wish to help.
>
> the linux knowledge base is a huge undertaking and is not something that
> i or cheek consulting is going to be able to maintain on our own without
> sacrificing quality.  but i also feel that something with this broad of
> an appeal should not be maintained by one body or a closed group; linux
> is a community effort and having a closed linux knowledge base would not
> be proper.  it would not embody the spirit of linux or the linux
> commmunity. i hope that each of you, should you choose to do so, will
> help enhance the knowledge base and make it a better resource than i
> could do alone.
>
> the linux knowledge base is a commercial effort, but i would rather have
> it be a 'for-profit bazaar', borrowing the term from eric raymond's
> cathedral/bazaar paper.  i have been involved in a for-profit bazaar
> before, and it did not get off the ground because the leader found too
> many legal tangles getting a group of people together as a corporation.
> i'm not going to get all of you together in any legal structure, and i
> think we can avoid any traps along those lines.  there is a precedence
> for compensating individuals involved in enhancement and promotion of
> web sites as affiliates, and there are other, more normal methods of
> compensation such a discounts on product and the like.  i expect that
> there are many of you that will not want any monetary compensation at
> all, and would rather choose other rewards for your time and energy.
> more on this later.
>
> a word on lurkers: while i hope that each of you will choose to take
> active role in the kb, if you choose just to lurk on this list you are
> welcome to do so.  i've got nothing to hide 8-).
>
> so with that in mind, here is what i have been thinking on in regards to
> the four areas mentioned above:
>
> - what ideas to cover in the KB
>
> obviously linux, but we can be more specific than that.  plus i have
> info that doesn't specifically pertain to linux, such as c/c++, perl,
> php, etc.  i think the big qualifier here is "what do people actually DO
> on linux?"  a ton of people use perl on linux, so perl is listed.  not
> nearly as many people use xcdroast on linux, so it's not covered.  make
> sense?
>
> so ideas for new topics are needed.  one big thing missing right now is
> system administration.  possible subtopics here are: user
> administration, module administration, [network admin is already
> covered, is it covered well enough?], kernel is already covered, but
> what about file system administration, etc. etc.
>
> - how to keep the quality of the information listed high
>
> this is a big thing i need to rely on other people for help.  i can't
> maintain the site [which is still being overhauled] and the content and
> keep the quality up where i want it to be.  right now it's broken up as
> follows:
>
> hardware:
>   cdrom
>   laptop
>   modem
>   etc.
> software
>    apache
>    gimp
>    etc
> networking
> development
> misc
> "quick info"
> kbarticles
> man pages
> newsgroups
>
> and i'm thinking about having people to oversee different areas, such as
> a person directly responsible for the quality of the content in the perl
> subtopic, someone for apache, someone for laptops, etc., and then some
> people with more responsibility to cover entire topics such hardware
> [overseeing cdroms, laptops, etc., and the people working on those].
> plus some administrative areas, such as testing, promotion, etc. etc.
>
> - how to maximize exposure to the Knowledge Base
>
> i've done a fair amount here, and have pretty much exhausted all my free
> resources. i've gotten pretty good exposure on linux today, and i can
> get exposure here in seattle, but freshmeat only has shown my kbquery
> program and the cd's [not the site] and slashdot doesn't seem to want to
> help me at all.  i've also gotten exposure on linuxresources.com and a
> couple of other key web sites. [i advertised on linux.org, and
> linuxtoday's articles get posted on linux.com, also.]
>
> i have contacted a few well-known linux cd distributors and a linux
> distro about selling/bundling, but no word yet.  i've contacted linux
> journal about advertising in their magazine, waiting also for
> information from them.  ideas are welcome.
>
> i've also just started an affiliate program, paying for links to the
> site.  standard terms, ie 2 to 10 cents per clickthrough depending on
> which page linked to.  any of you are welcome to sign up; this
> enhancement/promotion effort will be separate from the affilate
> program.  surf to http://members.cheek.com/affiliates/ if you are
> interested.
>
> - how to properly compensate those who wish to help.
>
> right now the cd's are the biggest profit center, and they have paid for
> all the materials with profit but not for my time yet.  another profit
> center i hope to cultivate is banner ads.  right now the linuxkb is
> generating 70,000 banner impressions a month and climbing perhaps 10% a
> month.  we still have unsold inventory, meaning that most of the banners
> we are serving now we have not been paid to serve, we have done it for
> free.  i've been able to sell a few sponsors and a few trades, but i
> think the next step would be to get a banner brokerage house involved.
>
> i've looked at flycast, they want a minimum of 100,000 banner
> impressions a month and even then they may not take me.  i've got a
> friend with a financial web site that generates 300,000 impressions a
> month; he's getting $23 per 1000 impressions.  if we could net a deal
> like that i would be happy, but linux is a much more difficult sell to
> the suits than mutual funds [what he does].  flycast does a minimum of
> $6 per 1000, even that's better than some of the ones now that will give
> $10 per 1000 *clickthroughs*, that's like taking banner revenue and
> dividing it by 100.  with our current banner statistics and a 1% typical
> click-through rate, we'd get a whopping $70 a month from banner
> revenue.  not exciting.
>
> i've been thinking about structuring your revenue similar to the concept
> of affiliates, except it would be driven by impressions rather than
> clickthroughs.  for instance, the laptop maintainer would get
> compensated based how many people visited the laptop page, etc.  this
> would be in return for helping maintain the laptop page.  make sense?
> i'm willing for a start to put up 50% of the banner ad revenues as cash
> payouts for you guys/gals+affiliates.  i don't think there's any other
> affiliate-like program out there that is ingesting 50% of their gross
> back into the community that sponsored them, so i think that's a huge
> generous offer.  of course, it's really moot until the banner ad revenue
> gets rolling in.  at 70,000 impressions a month and 10% growth per
> month, it's still 3 months away.  i feel confident that with your help
> we could get it to be 1 month away instead.  even at $10 per 1000 we'd
> get $1000 gross per month, that's $500 a month right there that would be
> earmarked for you.  not a lot but its a place to start, and i want to
> impress upon you that i am being very candid now.
>
> but i think some are not interested in monetary compensation, they are
> perhaps more interested in building traffic to their site, building
> content for their site, or perhaps furthering their own products,
> getting a great deal on software [we resell caldera, corel wordperfect,
> and obviously the linuxkb, more to come?], branding themselves or their
> products, getting web design or web hosting services, access to a secure
> server, cobranding web sites, banner advertising, etc. etc. etc.  maybe
> one of you could really use a search engine for your site and would
> gladly trade time spent helping the kb for a free site-wide search
> engine, the list goes on.  we also have our webagents, right now they
> are pretty simple but we plan to extend them and start charging for the
> premium services.  so there's a lot of different ways that we can
> negotiate, but we don't want your time and effort without providing
> *something* in return.
>
> so i would like to hear from _each_ of you the following:
>
> what your interest in the linux kb is
> how interested in helping enhance/expand/promote the linux kb you are,
> for the right price
> what the right price is
> how you think you can help
> what ideas you have
> and anything else you want to share.  perhaps some personal details?
> i'll go first.  joseph wayne cheek, 25, married with one child [3 1/2
> month daughter named rachel], wife's name is liza but she pronounces it
> lisa, i'm mormon and served a mission in chicago, living in seattle now
> for two years, i used to work for microsoft but quit a while ago, hmm...
> i've been consulting for close to 3 years now, have a linux column in
> the local computer paper, also a book soon but i can't tell you about it
> 8-).  anything else you want to know?  i'm a pretty open guy, i'd like
> you all to be but that's really up to you.  if we are to be working some
> together, tho, it'll help us get along better.
>
> thanks for reading this far!  any questions?
>
> joe
>
> --
>       ___            ___
>    __ | |_   __   __ | |_      __   __   _____  * Joseph Cheek, Director
>   / _)|   \ / _) / _)|  _)    / _) /  \ |     | * joseph@cheek.com or
>  ( (_ | | |(  _)(  _)|  \  _ ( (_ ( () )| |_| | * (877) CHEEK.COM
>   \__)|_|_| \__) \__)|_\_)(_) \__) \__/ |_| |_| * http://www.cheek.com/
>     Cheek Consulting, Seattle, provides Linux and Internet solutions
>    linux * web commerce * html * java * perl * php * informix * mysql

--
      ___            ___
   __ | |_   __   __ | |_      __   __   _____  * Joseph Cheek, Director
  / _)|   \ / _) / _)|  _)    / _) /  \ |     | * joseph@cheek.com or
 ( (_ | | |(  _)(  _)|  \  _ ( (_ ( () )| |_| | * (877) CHEEK.COM
  \__)|_|_| \__) \__)|_\_)(_) \__) \__/ |_| |_| * http://www.cheek.com/
    Cheek Consulting, Seattle, provides Linux and Internet solutions
   linux * web commerce * html * java * perl * php * informix * mysql



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