Hi!

Being somewhat of a beginner myself, or at least a newcomer, I can relate
to the steep learning curve.  I also attempted the supervision of
psychology students on a guix hackathon (as an experiment) not too long
ago: utter beginners and we focused on reviewing the documentation, with
the idea of creating material for beginners. More on that soon, hopefully.

The missing “search” feature that seems to have triggered this thread, is
indeed important, from a beginner’s perspective, I think. But I tend to
agree with the later post warning about the multiplicity of ways to connect
and get information: the information that beginners need really is in the
current documentation, which at times can be opaque or confusing (going
back and forth between guix system native and guix package manager on a
host, without necessarily explicit warning; or possible discrepancies
between the manual and the cookbook), and could use a bit of TLC.

The way I use the doc, is by loading the latest manual in the browser as
one page, and use the search function of the browser. That helps but it
also implies I know what I am looking for, and I can fill in the gaps, eg
about context (guix system vs host).

I don’t think we necessarily need another outlet, and should maybe just
consolidate what we have. If ways to connect to the community are explicit
(and they currently aren't very visible), I don't think beginners would
need another portal or forum, or another way to read issues from git. Also
really, reading git commit messages should not be the way to inform
beginners.

Of note, I currently have access to: (I am hugely grateful to the many
people who answered what might have seemed an endless stream of questions
on irc.!)
- google, as well as the doc and the cookbook
- this mailing list and others: guix-devel, guix-help, ... 8 in total and
they all have archives: https://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=guix
- the irc channels, #guix #nonguix #guix-hpc #systemcrafters
#systemcrafters-help #guix-offtopic: https://guix.gnu.org/en/contact/irc/
(with logs: https://logs.guix.gnu.org)
- the guix-hpc events like monthly cafe guix:
https://hpc.guix.info/events/2022/café-guix/
- and the mattermost server by the same people:
https://mattermost.univ-nantes.fr/signup_user_complete/?id=njdxbdazafddtq6wsm6cgrr95r

Have a great day!

Etienne


On Thu, 13 Jul 2023 at 23:39, <vidak@riseup.net> wrote:

> On 2023-07-13 21:52, Sarthak Shah wrote:
> > Hey Guix,
> > I think we should seriously consider having a user forum similar to
> > Debian's User Forum or Nixos' Discourse.
> >
> > As of now, it's a bit difficult for beginners to find answers to their
> > problems in the mailing list or in IRC logs as they aren't very easy to
> > navigate compared to forum threads. Seeing the situation with RHEL, I
> think
> > now's the perfect time for us to acquire new HPC/stability-oriented users
> > in particular, and I believe that most of them would not be very
> > IRC/mailing list-savvy either.
> > It would also immensely help to have community discussions and other
> forms
> > of information concentrated in one location instead of split over the IRC
> > and the mailing list.
> >
> > If we are to go ahead with making a forum, I think I'm speaking for a lot
> > of people here when I say that I don't want a forum that cannot be used
> > without Javascript or cannot be built/deployed with Guix. Given these
> > constraints, Discourse is not a good option as it does not build on Guix.
> > phpBB and SMF are two good options we could look into, although they
> look a
> > little dated compared to discourse. Flarum might also be worth looking
> > into, but I am not sure if it will build properly on Guix.
> >
> > Software suggestions as well as thoughts on this idea would be greatly
> > appreciated!
> >
> > Regards,
> > Sarthak.
>
> A great idea. I would use a forum. I would say just go ahead and set up
> a forum yourself, and I'll bring some people along that I know from the
> fediverse.
>
> ~vidak
>
>