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
Have a great day!
Etienne