Tim Rowledge <tim at sumeru.stanford.edu> wrote:
> I made a small start; if a dozen people each tackled a paragraph or two
> we'd soon see some improvement. 

Go Tim go!  I really like your ideas from the original post.

I have trouble viewing your text, though; maybe you can repost it either
as a normal non-uuencoded attachment or on a wiki, so that more people
can see it?  Honestly, though, *any* principled review should be a huge
improvement on what we have.

I don't know whether the introductory material itself can be done by a
swarm of ants as you suggest.  This seems precisely like the kind of
thing that needs a champion to pull it all together, and *that* is a
major reason I'd guess the current welcome windows are getting stale. 
But you do not have to flesh out every little detail; if you could at
least make a full outline this would be a vast improvement on what we
have.  And of course there are a lot of places to defer work once you
really get into the thick of things and start mentioning music, etoys,
networking, etc.


Also, I'd like to toss out that if we only have *one* volunteer who
attempts a new  welcome-to-squeak setup of the image, then that one
volunteer should automatically win the "competition" and should not have
to go through piles of review.  It really seems like any motivated
editor is going to do better than piles of small submissions that we all
review individually.  And if there is actually some dissent, I think
people should have to come up with a *complete* replacement that we can
then vote on.  A good introduction is a crystal and not a ball of
chocolate.


-Lex

PS -- the idea of linking off to Play With Me projects is great.  There
could be more of this....