I thought of that after eating some yummy fastfood at burger king:

What about a site that would explain newbie things to newbies? We geeks all know how a webserver works or how a program crashes but 'common people' don't know that. We could explain that in a very simple way. This would help to 'demistify' (does that word exists in english) some concepts of computers and may bring more newbie to really understand what computers are about. The site could include some FAQ on a particular theme like "Web Servers", "Web Pages", "Games", "Inside your computer", etc.

Of course, that probably already exists, that requires alot of work and that has nothing to do with TPU, but eh... I just wanted to share this idea.

That is one of my things on my extensive "To Do" list.

Neumann I think that you can stop asking if a word exists etc... you have really good english.

yep, was #4051 on my list "lead the ignorant to the light", changed it to "hit the ignorant with flashlight" to reduce workload.

I think there are plenty of site explaining the basics. Perhaps selecting a few of good ones and point the newbies to it.

RedX: I know there are plenty already. But if we only look for ideas that don't exist, we might as well shut down the site.

No, TPU was a completely unique idea. Any duplicates now came later, so _they_ would be the ones to shut down. :P

Okay okay...

Let's find another marvellous idea like TPU was at that time then! :o

It's not that it's been done that is the problem. The thing is that every computer magazine has published such things several times before and probably has this still on their webpages too, not to mention how many people wrote their own introductions. I would suggest to build up a *maintained* list of links to the better articles rather than writting the same stuff again.

guh! Writing the same stuff again, even while knowing it already exists, would be much much more interresting than maintaining a list of links...

If anyone could be bothered, which they won't be , both would be even better.

Maintaining the list means checking once in a while if they are still pointing to the page and not to 404. Which would only take a hour work (or so, depending on the # of links).
But if you like writting, go for it.

I do like writing, I don't have time,at present.

Yet another useless thing that could waste someones time to write is a mission statement to post on the front page detailing what EXACTLY TPU is here for and does. It can be explained in the statement that we do not DO homework but we will HELP and perhaps define some boundries.

Either that or a simple RULES/GUIDELINES section.

I wonder if people even read the messages I post.

THERE HAS BEEN FOR A WHILE A RULES PAGE SHOWN TO EVERY PERSON WHO SIGNS UP, AND ALSO LINKED FROM THE FRONT PAGE FOR EVERYONE ("Message to new members").

hehe.. Soz I must have missed that post.

Actually, that might not be bad. It could have "How do I make a Quake clone in 15 minutes" type questions as well, answered with a listing of different 3d game engines on sourceforge, and explaining how impossible that is on your own. Or like a "Hacking" one, the newbie clicks on it and it tells them about the uses of the work hacker, how your only chances of being one is to learn a lot about computers etc.

It would get people to stay here for more then 5 minutes, and as well maybe interest them.

I think we should review TPU mission statement... Do we want to give teens what they want? Do we want to give them what we think they should want? Or simply target this site on geek or smart teens only?

i think the " how do i make quake in 15mins" should be redirected to the official quake site and the " hacking" question should be sent to the FBI's most wanted hackers page.

This site is here for people who want to be part of what it actually is, we shouldn't be trying to make it acessible to those who want to "hack", because that would be against the original members ethics, however we sould encourage people to become good enough in computers that they could hack. ie/ newbie forum to get people up to scratch on their absolute essentials. By the time they are good enough to know how, the chances are we'll have ruined their lives, made them completely unsocial and girlfreindless.

Joke

They will be good enough that they will think of hacking as lame.

Screw ethics... The more new people we will have, the more wannabe hackers and talentless John Carmacks Jr. will visit us.

Do we want new people or not?

I dunno? Do we? Have we actually thought about that?

I suppose we want new people. We welcome them on this site and invite them to ask questions and hang out on TPU.

But on the other hand, whenever a newbie ask a question that appear stupid, some people freaks out asking them to read the rules... The "Load & Save In VB" thread is a good example of that. Newbie have tendencies to think we can read their mind and that's perfectly normal (if it's not, it's very usual). Homeworks questions will also keep coming...

The more new people we'll have the more problem like that will happen. Are we all ready? :o

I am.

Neumann "Do we want to give them what we think they should want?"

U happen to be working for M$? ;-)


I think we should be a bit more subtle when pointing out the rules to newbies. We don't want to scare them away, do we?

RedX: I see what you mean but no, I'm not working for M$ :P And M$ would be more like: "Do we whant to give them what we think they don't know they absolutely need and that we will sell them outrageous prices?"

I think that well informed people, in all domain, tend to concentrate on what they think newbies in the domain should be learning. In fact, most of the time, they really should be learning what more experienced people think they should learn. That's what school is about. But in our case, the newbies are aged from 12 to 16 y/o, which makes them very reluctant to things that even remotely look like school. I was like that too when I was 14... You probably all were. That's why I think we should 'open up' a bit on things that may look stupid to the eyes of experienced people.

We need a statement on that.

What if we where all just polite for a second.
It seems that all of the recent newbie asked questions have lapsed into suggestions for this website.

Or what about keeping this place the same as it was before? Make it more obscure so we only get people who want to find it.

mop: I've got no problem with keeping the site as it is... we just need to decide what TPU is about for that and if it's justified