Re: [seul-edu] School Networking Guide (was: need detailed network advice)

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

Response at end. 

Doug - the response mentions waiting a week. There is nothing magic about
that length of time, but it seemed like a reasonable compromise between
making sure everybody saw the message and not letting this sit around
forever (especially since this is a holiday weekend in the USA). Do you
think a different "waiting period" would be better?

At 07:51 AM 9/2/00 EDT, Douglas Loss wrote:
>On Fri, 01 Sep 2000, Ray Olszewski wrote:
>> I don't know of one book (or any other one source) that covers
>> this range of
>> stuff. At least not that covers it all *well* ... ...
>You know, this is what the SEUL/edu documentation project (the
>Educational HOWTOs) was started for.  Something dealing with
>this question (a School Networking Guide) would be a welcome
>addition, just like L Prevett's Math Teacher's Guide.  Let's see
>if we can create the central document you're all saying doesn't
>currently exist.
>
>Ray, this may be presumptuous, but would you be willing to
>oversee the creation of such a document?  We'd need an outline
>of what needs to be covered and they volunteers to write the
>various sections, with an overall manager (that'd be you) to
>make sure all the bits fit together well.  What do yousay?

This is an idea that interests me, enough so to explore it some more but not
*yet* enough for me to commit to it. It is easy to say an idea is "good" and
start in on it, but a lot harder to carry it through to completion. To help
figure out not whether the idea is "good" but whether it is "good enough",
let me pose three requests.

1. Do others on the list see this as a valuable project? If you have an
opinion on this, please respond, either on the list or privately to me (as
you prefer). I'll summarize the responses after a week. I will respect the
privacy of messsages sent to me privately, but I will include their essence
in my summary.

2. Are their enough volunteers interested in this project? My initial
estimate is that it would take about a dozen people, aside from myself, to
do this right, without overly burdening any one of us. So, if you are
willing to volunteer, please post a message saying so, along with two details:

        1. your suggestions as to what the scope of the document
                should be (ideally, a proposed list of chapters)

        2. an indication of that pieces of #1 you would be willing to
                take on writing the initial draft of.

Again, feel free to respond privately or on the list. In a week, I will
report back the results, including the actual list (names and e-mail
addresses) of everyone who volunteered. ("Volunteers" who say they do not
want their identities revealed do not count toward the total.)

3. This one is a bit more personal -- while I will consider taking on the
role of onverseeing, editing, and contributing to the CONTENT of this
prospective document, I do not want to take on the "desktop publishing"
aspects of the project. I personally find applications like Xemacs and LyX
hard to use, and creating source documents that conform to the LinuxDoc or
DocBook standards is difficult for me.(Or as I've put it elsewhere -- I want
to *write* documentation, not *program* documentation.)

I know others find the step of going from a text "manuscript" to a LinuxDoc
or DocBook source file easy or interesting or fun. (I know this because the
preceding comments always elicit responses that if I just "gave it a try",
I'd come to like it. I did "give it a try" and I didn't come to like it, so
that's not the solution.) I need at least one person to volunteer to handle
this step without any help from me (beyond producing the source document in
text format). 

Here too, reply privately or on the list, as you prefer. In either case,
once again, I will report back in a week on the results of this request,
including the name and e-mail address of anyone who does volunteer. And here
too, "secret" volunteering doesn't count.

I welcome any other responses as well, either on the list of privately. I
will consider them to the appropriate degree ... but the responses to the
three requests I posed above will primarily guide whether I elect to take
this project on. If I do take it on, I see my role as
        
        finalizing the outline and doling out writing assignments

        writing one or two chapters myself

        serving as general editor

        managing the process of getting user feedback and coordinating
                updates (which will require an ongoing commitment
                from the volunteer writers and volunteer "publisher")

Finally, some members of this list might find the style of this message
pushy or offensive (or something worse, I suppose). While that is not my
intention in posting it, my intention IS to try to be realistic about what
this project would take to succeed, and to convey something of my personal
style to those of you who might be working with me over the next few months. 

If your reaction to this message is negative, you probably won't want to
work with me. In that case, I encourage you to volunteer for a different
project (and, if you care to, tell me why, privately - I will respect your
privacy, but my summary will mention how many messages of this type I
receive - if there are many of them, it might mean that this is a good
project but I am not a good "general manager" for it - and Doug needs to
know that). 


--
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA           	 	         ray@comarre.com        
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