Guidelines for members of the NewUsersNetwork

We want to make Ubuntu friendly for users who are new to linux, which means that members of the NUN will have to tolerate a lot of cluelessness without shouting RTFM, JFGI, UTFS or ather acronyms that will confuse newbies even more and even scare them away.

In short, I propose the following set of guidelines:

1. Whether you are helping out on IRC, the mailing lists or the forums, always stay friendly to people, especially if you see they are new to linux. Give them wiki links instead of the command to use Google.
2. Regularly browse through the wiki and see what information is available
3. If you solve problems you see, try to document solutions on the wiki.
4. Use caution when recommending people to use ubuntuguide.org, there are several reasons for this:
   • Ubuntuguide.org occasionally presents wrong solutions, ranging from suboptimal solutions to pure regressions.
   • Ubuntuguide.org is not really a guide, but a mere list of command you might enter. It gives no explanations at all. If one wants to learn how the solution works, the wiki is a better recommendation.
   • Most information on Ubuntuguide.org is present on the wiki in clearer and expanded form.
5. Do not advise people to use marillat, Debian has moved on after the Hoary freeze and may/will cause dependency problems
6. Despite issues in the past, backports are safe to use now, especially as a replacement for marillat. But please do advice people to only use only hoary-extras. hoary-backports can be used too, but shouldn't be neccessary.
7. If you see people giving bad advise, do not hesitate to point out that they shouldn't. Refer to these guidelines if neccessary

8. If you have operator/moderator privileges, use them wisely and only kick/ban/moderate people who are really disturbing the channel/forum. Do not do this to users who seem to be a bit clueless, since usually people who are new to Linux are clueless and it's our task to give them some clue. That's why they came to the community

9. Sign the code of conduct and send it to Mako to become an Ubuntite. If you want to, and your efforts are good, become a member too.
10. This shouldn't be neccessary, but: Always adhere to the code of conduct. This also means: point people to the code of conduct before starting to shout/kick/moderate etc...

These guidelines aren't final yet, it's a second draft. Please add your comments to the ["/talk"] page! (but do not change things on this page without telling people)