Having inhabited a number of GNU mailing lists for few years now, I see that people occasionally email them with wholly unrelated problems. My current guess is that this happens because they happen to see --help output from a GNU program or see the BUGS section of some GNU manpage, and decide to ask that email address for help with their problem.
There was a recent mail to bug-coreutils in which somebody asked for help with an installation CD on bug-coreutils@gnu.org, for example. I can see how they got to that point, quite reasonably (via "man install" or "install --help"). But we weren't able to help them. We're working on clearer text to indicate what "install" is for, but I realised this morning that we have an opportunity to help in a more general way. Often a person seeking to solve a problem doesn't yet know what tool they need to use to solve (or even diagnose) their problem. This of course is one of the problems with man pages that Info tries to solve. However, I think there is probably a case to be made for putting a very generic link on how to get help with free software in GNU manpages, --help output and so forth. The logical thing to do is put a single web page somewhere on www.gnu.org and include in that page things that help users find resources to help them. I've made an outline of such a document below. It would likely be an enhancement to the document currently at <http://www.gnu.org/help/gethelp.html>. What do you think? If you think this is a good idea but think the outline could be better, please et me know. Thanks, James. <!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" --> <TITLE>Getting Help With Free Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)</TITLE> <LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:webmast...@www.gnu.org";> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="GNU, help, support, free software"> <meta http-equiv="Description" content="How to get help with Free Software" /> <BASE HREF="http://www.gnu.org/";> <!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" --> <H2>Getting Help With Free Software</H2> <!-- Maybe include a brief pointer to the 'this document in other languages' footer. --> <!-- Brief description of what this document is for. Essentially, the purpose of this document is to be a useful thing for the BUGS section of GNU manpages to point to, to help those who have not identified a bug, but simply need more (or a different form of) help. An illustrative example is people who are looking at the manpage for "install" because they want to install a binary package. --> <H3>Support-related Benefits of Free Software</H3> <!-- How the three freedoms help people to help you. --> <!-- The fact that anybody can fix it probably means they already did that. --> <!-- I don't think this document is the right place to rant about how unuseful it is to rule out Free Software just because of the lack of warranty. This document is intended to be a resource more than a manifesto. We already have a manifesto. --> <H3>Helpful Resources Provided by the GNU Project</H3> <!-- Texinfo documentation, web pages, mailing lists. --> <H3>Accessing GNU Documentation</H3> <H4>Info documentation</H4> <H4>Web pages</H4> <H3>Other Documentation</H3> <H4>The Linux Documentation Project</H4> <H4>Usenet and Web FAQs</H4> <!-- "Usenet" FAQs in terms of origin; I am not sure that seeking help on Usenet would be useful these days, except for a small set of groups. --> <H3>Help With Specific Distributions</H3> <!-- If you're running a GNU/Linux distribution, there are plenty of help resources specific to the one you're using. Explain how to find these. --> <H3>Mailing Lists and Newsgroups</H3> <H4>How to Find the Right Mailing List<H4> <!-- Point to the GNU mailman instance. Also GMANE and other similar mailing list archives. --> <H4>How to Describe Your Problem<H4> <!-- Remind people to check that they're using an up-to-date version. Don't make this an H3 heading, because the reader may not know (yet) how to do such a thing, and we want them to read this document, not be scared off. --> <H4>Getting Help in Your Language<H4> <H3>Real-Time Help from People</H3> <H4>Real-Time Help over the Internet</H4> <!-- I plan to mainly give pointers to IRC networks/channels. Is anything else real-time and useful? --> <H4>Meeting People Who Can Help</H4> <!-- LUGs etc. Do we call them GNU/LUGs? :) --> <H3>Your Option to Pay for Support</H3> <!-- Explain that you can get _anybody_ to help, on any basis agreeable to both parties. --> <!-- Pointer to the GNU Service Directory. --> </div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above --> <!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" --> <div id="footer"> <P> Return to <A HREF="/home.html">GNU's home page</A>. <P> Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to <A HREF="mailto:g...@gnu.org";><EM>g...@gnu.org</EM></A>. There are also <A HREF="http://www.fsf.org/about/contact.html";>other ways to contact</A> the FSF. <P> Please send comments on these web pages to <A HREF="mailto:webmast...@www.gnu.org";><EM>webmast...@www.gnu.org</EM></A>, send other questions to <A HREF="mailto:g...@gnu.org";><EM>g...@gnu.org</EM></A>. <p> Please send comments on this specific page the findutils maintainers at <A HREF="mailto:bug-findut...@gnu.org";><EM>bug-findut...@gnu.org</EM></A>. <P> Copyright © 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA <P> Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. <P> Updated: $Date: 2008/12/07 21:54:38 $Author: jay $ <P> <HR> </BODY> </HTML> _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
