I need to read through this thread for good ideas. But before that, I need to exercise and get breakfast. But before that, I would like to comment on the general strategy of helping newcomers find relevant information:
First, at some point, a person learning J is going to have to try it out. We have been making good strides there, but we need to encourage people especially when they are stuck, to try things for themselves. And, maybe we need to walk them through the steps of trying things for themselves, and of course creating examples will help. I think it's a mix of holding their hands and supporting them and encouraging them to try things on their own. Second, writing and creating reference documentation, and linking it properly, is also a very useful step. But even more important is examples. The jwiki has good examples, rosettacode is another nice reference. We need more of this. Perhaps the alioth benchmarks would be good. We also need to acknowledge our weak points - both to give interested people things they can work on and to help emphasize our strong points Finding a good balance here is tough, and planning out our next steps is even tougher. Following through on those plans though (or abandoning them for other people to work on) is where we need to be. But what I wanted to point out is that search engines rely on pressure from external links to raise the importance of a page. So if you find a page that surprises you with how useful it is? Please blog about it and leave a link to it. Or put something on the wiki. If you are a part of a professional organization, maybe push something through that organization's information system pointing at the reference you found. If you are part of a professional organization which does not have the ability to link to good online references, maybe make the reference in some other way, and maybe also think about whether your professional scope is too limited. It's not just one thing. And I need to get breakfast. Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
