Ubuntu turns to NUN to help new users
Linux.com | Ubuntu turns to NUN to help new users.
The New Users Network, or NUN, is a group of experienced Ubuntu enthusiasts who help new Ubuntu users come to grips with the operating system.
Volunteer NUN mentors spend time on Ubuntu forums, mailing lists, and IRC channels looking for new user queries. The mentors have agreed to follow the NUN guidelines, which caution against the use of popular responses to newbie questions, such as RTFM, JFGI, and UTFS. Instead, they try to answer the queries in an easy-to-follow fashion, and point to online resources wherever possible, such as a wiki that explains things in details.
"At first the NUN was nothing more than an IRC channel (#ubuntu-nun on the freenode network) that we could bring a user from #kubuntu or #ubuntu into, for one-on-one work that couldn’t be done in the busier support channels. Since then, it has become a popular haven for geeks and new users alike," says Rich Johnson, a NUN mentor.
But what really makes this team laudable is its aim to foster intelligent and knowledgeable users. Throwing commands isn’t encouraged, unless that’s all the user wants. The NUN guidelines call for mentors to exercise caution while pointing users to resources such as ubuntuguide.org that simply list the commands to get a task done, without much explanation.
It sounds like the Ubuntu guys are hitting all the right notes with this; I can think of a couple of platforms that aren’t getting the adoption that they should because they don’t consider support for noob users to be a priority. I wonder how well Ubuntu users in remote time zones are supported?
Related posts:
