FCM readership: are articles too advanced?

[RobinC@Amethyst]

Had two conversations in two weeks with new beginners with Ubuntu and PC's in general; both had read articles of mine in the magazine and commented along the lines "good but a bit advanced..."

Is there a need (or scope) for an 'Absolute Beginners' column as a shortie - like Ronnie's file system piece way back?

Do we assume too much knowledge of switchers from MS-W*$@!#!s ?

Any thoughts??

RC

[ronniet]

Good question.

Although we do have some (what I would call 'intermediate') articles in FCM, I still try to include really basic stuff - like when we have a series of articles (server, GIMP, Scribus etc etc) - I always try to get people (including myself) to start off with the really basic stuff then work up givng step by step instructions.

Sometimes an article comes in that's intermediate, step by step, but the reader may not know the beginner stage of that article. Unfortunately we can't get every writer to do the beginner stage in all cases.

All in all, it could be worse: it could be all advanced stuff that's unreadable to most!

[nonewmsgs]

if i can make a recomendation, have some kind of rating. it's difficult to know for sure what the balancing is. like should moving a home partition be more stars because it's more advanced although only moderatly difficult?

i think it's a wonderful magazine.

[deicidist]

I agree. A rating system of some sort would be perfect. Whether it be in the form of 1-5 stars, 5 stars being more advanced, or even with just a small badge that says either "Beginner", "Intermediate" or "Advanced"

A nice, small, unobtrusive graphic incorporated into each "How-to" and tutorial article could be the answer to the problem at hand. This way the new users know which tutorials are safe to try and which are somewhat tricky and need to be followed very closely.

[ronniet]

But surely the reader will read through (at least) part of the article then decide for themselves whether it's safe to proceed or not?

Putting an Intermediate/Advanced badge on some articles may mean beginners would automatically skip them, rather than at least read them.

But I'm always open to new ideas, what do other FCM readers think??

[deicidist]

I think some would skip it for fear of the unknown but many would read it as a form of accomplishment and personal ranking. An Ubuntu beginner, who finds him/herself doing an intermediate or even advanced tutorial will feel a definite boost of confidence in working in the operating system thanks to FCM.
As time wears on, a beginner who skipped the intermediate articles months back can go back to all those tutorials and see how far they've come since they first picked up Ubuntu and started reading FCM.

[onlineapps]

But surely the reader will read through (at least) part of the article then decide for themselves whether it's safe to proceed or not?

Putting an Intermediate/Advanced badge on some articles may mean beginners would automatically skip them, rather than at least read them.

But I'm always open to new ideas, what do other FCM readers think??

I like the idea of rating articles. Better a beginner skipping an article than a beginner reading an article and complaining, "this Linux thing is too hard" and going back to Windows.

[jonabyte]

Generally, no to "too advanced", I think its a nice mix of some advanced and some beginner topics.
Also, I have found some really good "beginner" articles about features/software/etc I didn't know about.

[TopasPV]

Perhaps referring to old articles would be a good idea. This could be done by using tags. For example if you just read an article about how to setup and use proftpd the article could be tagged with "install software", "ftp" etc. These tags could link to an overview of fcm articles on the fcm website/wiki arranged by tags. This wouldn't take too much space in the magazine and the number of tags would be some kind of difficulty rating instrument saying "the more tags, the more articles should/could be read before this one is to be understood".

Just an idea...

[ronniet]

Perhaps referring to old articles would be a good idea. This could be done by using tags. For example if you just read an article about how to setup and use proftpd the article could be tagged with "install software", "ftp" etc. These tags could link to an overview of fcm articles on the fcm website/wiki arranged by tags. This wouldn't take too much space in the magazine and the number of tags would be some kind of difficulty rating instrument saying "the more tags, the more articles should/could be read before this one is to be understood".

Just an idea...

Kinda of like a 'see also:' box in the article, and list similar articles and which issue they are in? I'm giving myself more work here! Drat!

Assuming I put in the badges: what would be the criteria for making an article beginner, intermediate or advanced? Or maybe a star rating for difficulty would be better? One star being beginner, three star being intermediate and 5 star being advanced.