[mapserver-users] Re: user support

[Frank Warmerdam]

Milo van der Linden wrote:
> Frank Warmerdam schreef:
>> I think it would be very valuable if some people were willing to comb
>> the mailing list for frequently asked questions and answers and turn
>> some of them into FAQ entries on the plone site.
> If this would be done in a divide and conquer manner, I would be 
> interested. It would be a good thing if one could take a seat in some 
> sort of board and cover a certain aspect. I would be particulary 
> interested in contributing to WMS and WFS sections, as well as postGIS 
> integration since this is the area I am trying to make my business in. 
> Would it be possible that in return the person maintaining a certain 
> area of the documentation could offer commercial support and consultancy 
> on his particular field of expertise? Just a taught and trying to 
> discover if there is business value in signing up for this. Because in 
> the long run, we all need to make at least enough money to live.

Milo,

In Plone you can have a profile, and FAQ entries list their author.
So you can use your full name for your account and make sure your
author profile page describes you as a consultant, and your expertise
with a link page to your own web page.  This should have at least a
modest advertising effect.

I think FAQs mostly digested from mailing list responses should also
try to give some credit to the original author.

I'm not sure that specific divide and conquer rules will be easy to
manage.  I would suggest you just attack your area of interest.
Duplication of effort is the least of our problems now. :-)

> I hereby offer my couple of hours. Would it be an idea to set up a group 
> of say 100 people and then divide the list in blocks of say a month?

Well, I'm not sure about how that would work.  Again, I would suggest
you get a plone account from Howard, and just skim the email archives
for the last month or two looking for threads in your area of interest
and digest a few down into FAQs.  I'm sure there is also room for
additional categories in the FAQ if you think it would be helpful.

It may just be me, but I think any process that starts with "get a group
together and split up a task" is likely to get stalled and frustrated.
Better to just dig in and do a part of the task that you like, perhaps
with some notification / interaction as you find you need.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org