On 22-Apr-06, at 12:43 PM, Brad Fuller wrote: [snip my vague and waffley bits]
Let me offer some ideas.
We have started, what we call, an "Answer Board." It is nothing more than a moderated forum where people can ask specific questions. Those questions are answered by "experts." We understand that questions by beginners may not yield the answer the beginner has in mind -- the question may be vague, the beginner may not know how to ask the question, etc. So, a forum seemed to be a good way to "bat around" the question to ultimately arrive at a/the solution. (plus there are not 100 emails for a beginner to wade through.)
The "answers" are then reformulated and stored on a wiki for reference later. A beginner can always go to the wiki first to search. The Wiki is managed by people that are responsible for organizing and managing the question/answer - but they are not necessarily the "experts."
Let me reiterate Tim's urging that a Wiki *must* be maintained regularly. The squeak swiki is so outdated that it's very hard to use and I believe beginners will find it difficult and may, in the end, just give up. A well groomed, up-to-date Wiki is required to pull this off.
We are at the beginning of this exercise, but it proves to be worthwhile. We might consider this approach or a derivative.
An excellent way of putting exactly what I was trying to say. Discussion followed by synthesis followed by an ariticle.
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim "Both.." said Pooh, as the guillotine came down