Levels of difficulty

[Samuel]

This tour has the potential to be really useful for people of all levels of experience, but it would be a bad thing if people of too lower expertise were exposed to complex stuff (like the command line in any shape or form) - as it would put them off Ubuntu in a very short amount of time. It would be nice to be able to separate content in terms of difficulty and required knowledge and experience. People, when setting up the tour, could then select their level of experience and see only articles which they can cope with, at least until they get a bit of experience.

 I would propose four levels...

Things like navigating the desktop, using programs like Banshee, Firefox and OpenOffice and using the basics of the software centre should be at the first level. Also, all the basic features of Ubuntu like E-mail, Chat menu, Background etc.

Level 2 would go into more complex features of the normal programs, like appearence and themes (beyond background) and compizconfig and programs like GIMP.

The third level could be things which require basic terminal use (mentioning terminal in articles for anyone who is not very tech-savvy would seriously put them off Linux forever). Also, PPAs could be here or level 2. Other advanced tasks like mounting drives and filesystem-related stuff would be here too. Basic network admin tools could start here also, along with file sharing (as, at least in 10.10, it takes a lot of messing around with to work).

Level 4 would be medium+ terminal stuff almost exclusively. Perhaps a few of the more advanced network tools could be here too.

Just a thought, but it would make it easier to decide what to put into articles, as we can just write them for various experience levels.

[UndiFineD (k.dejong)]

This has been coined in the past,
along with training exercises and questionnaire to complete a tour.
The application could serve as a minimal level of knowledge certification.

[Samuel (sc7898)]

Questionnaires would be a little excessive - it's a guide, not a test, and people shouldn't think of it as such. Not to mention that it would be almost impossible to write good questions for it.

[UndiFineD (k.dejong)]

2011/2/16 Samuel <email address hidden>:
> estionnaires would be a little excessive - it's a guide, not a test,
> and people shouldn't think of it as such. Not to mention that it would
> be almost impossible to write good questions for

Take little miss administration,
she has no idea how computers work,
yet her boss chose to use Ubuntu, so far great,
but she does not yet recognize the recycle bin

a questionnaire could be to show her 3 pictures,
one of course being the recycle bin, we are not that BOFH.

--
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Keimpe de Jong

[Samuel (sc7898)]

Yeah, but if the tour already tells you what the "Rubbish bin" is, there would be no need to quiz people about it - especially when the answer would be obvious (there is only one bin icon in the main UI of Ubuntu/Unity). I think a test would just be offputting. Perhaps to compromise, a we could have a "Lesson objectives" type thing at the start and then a little checklist of key points at the end - like a school textbook. I think that would actually be quite useful, though they might only be appropriate for certain sections of the tour. These sorts of iideas need an IRC discussion really though, if there hasn't already been one.

[Anthony Stewart (madnessred)]

the development branch now allows for a difficulty rating out of 10 for the tours.

[Samuel (sc7898)]

That's good, but is there a clear criteria for what each of the ratings mean? For example, we know there are some Linux enthusiasts who consider the terminal to be so easy and fundamental that they'd put in on the first page and rate the difficulty as 1 if they had the chance - others wouldn't touch their laptops with an insuative barge pole if any sort of command line was on the screen...

Especially in a project like this where many contributers will be quite expert, such guidelines would be important.