[nycbug-talk] eurobsdcon

[Sunny Dubey]

On Sunday 23 May 2004 08:00 pm, Dru wrote:

> What other ideas have you guys seen, done, or heard of? Which URLs are
> worth mentioning? Or is this talk even worth doing?

Having end users do end user support.

We all know devheads can be real busy people.  And so they don't have time 
to  answer simple questions like "how do I get it to do X,Y,Z?".  But the 
various end users might.

Most FLOSS apps have various forums, lists, or IRC channels.  Joining one 
and hanging around to answer questions if you can, and when you can is of 
great help to any FLOSS project.

It helps the end user do what they desire to do with the app:  to get the 
job done, not spend all day RTFMing.

Example:

There is this guy named f3ew on the #postfix IRC channel.  From what I 
gather he is a patch submitter to postfix, but more importantly he answers 
a rather hefty amount of questions asked in #postfix.  I've seen people ask 
some pretty bizarre questions and f3ew seems to spit the *correct* answer 
out in a rather fast manner.  Sure he may never be recognized for his end 
user support for postfix, but IMNSHO he def has made a large contribution 
to postfix.

Sunny Dubey