Would anybody be willing to shell out some money and hire (or offer a bounty for) a viable "Getting Started with Asterisk" or "Asterisk for Dummies" or "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Asterisk" or something like that? RTFM is better/easier than UTFG, IMHO.
The Vovida/vocal team (granted they are funded by Cisco) has actually written a book that was published by O'Reilly (sp?) an company last year. While a printed book may not be a great idea, considering the pace at which things change, how about an e-book? I know that Mark has (rightly) held onto the distribution rights on the existing rather thin manual. I don't want to do anything to cut down on the draw to his site. But I think an independently created and maintained manual (rather an Opensource book?) might be the best answer. Kind of a combination of the current manual and Olle's Wiki, plus additional information on advanced topics: AGI programming, Festival TTS, the Manager interface, the billing interface, etc. Rather than telling newbies (especially the technically challenged) to "google for it", we could send them a link to the ebook and tell them to run the search in Acrobat reader to find the answer. Anybody want to start a thread building the outline for the book? Regards, Steven Sokol Sokol & Associates, LLC -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Hester Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 10:26 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] FAQ, Documentation, How-to, etc Just a had to put in a few points on this... First, it is correct that there is no cause to be rude, either by repling rudely or posting without doing any research. I think that a response directing them to the proper resources is better than not responding at all. Second, one of the main problems has been documenatation as everyone knows. As one of the people suggesting a wiki several months back, I am thankful to those who have hosted/maintained/posted. Searching the mailing list archives can be futile in a lot of cases because it can be to tedious/laborious to find an answer in a timeframe that is practical. This is why we need the wiki. I would suggest that we start refering them to the wiki as well as the mailing list. Props to Olle & BKW for responding with their docs. Lastly, I'm not sure that the footer idea will work at all. It is doubtful that the people asking the questions in question will read the footer. The idea is to put links to the documentation, wiki, unofficial * pages and instructions BEFORE the mailing list stuff on the Asterisk support page. Other wise many will not even see it much less take the time to read it. I believe Critch suggested something like this in a thread a few days ago. ie you can only post after you've read the instructions or something. Snip With the exception of I don't know how hard it is to setup, I wouldn't mind this going to a semi moderated group. RO access requires little intervention. Basically it is the default. Posting requires a quick read of the FAQ with a quick push through a small and to the point netiquete page, and then maybe a 2 or 3 question pop quiz afterwords. After that, release the posting restriction. It is fairly minimalistic, and shouldn't get too in the way of users who want to lurk and read first. Snip We as a community have made great strides from even a few months backas far as docs goes, I think we just need to make sure it gets out there and then if people still ask questions without research, we can turn Critch loose on 'em. ;) Sincerely, Andy Hester _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
