[Typo3] Strategy for page templates... help needed.

[Tyler Kraft]

Amy

What you have written is very true and all the points you've raised are 
true.  We have all been where you as newbies are in the past, and that 
is what is the frustrating point.  We understand how you feel - as 
newbies - but the issue still exists that a lot of questions are just 
not well searched out!

It seems that a lot of questions, and questioners, don't look at the 
archives, How To's or FAQs on typo3.org.  When I started working with 
typo3 two years ago I noticed that foolishly asked questions were not 
responded to or criticised.  So I learned to read everything, and look 
every where.  I thought about what I needed to find and then I searched 
by single key words, and combinations of them, and I read all the 
answers. And then it was often a matter of rereading it all to start to 
put pieces together.  It took a lot of time, yes, but I learned a lot in 
the process.  To the stage I'm at now where I can often turn a site 
around totally in a matter of 2-3 days 
(html/CSS/javascript/typo3/groups/users/set-up...) if I need to.

Google is great but is not infallible, or the be-all-end-all. The point 
I'm making is that if we, as experienced users, have gone to all this 
trouble to learn how to use the system by reading and researching,a and 
now by volunteering our time and knowledge... how do so many newbies 
expect to learn anything by asking the most simple questions.  Its an 
extremely versatile and complex system, but the only way to be good with 
it is to truly come to know it and then to start to think outside the 
conventional parameters.  I remember a posting quoting Kasper as once 
saying 'I didn't know it could do that!' There is just so much to learn, 
but the only way to learn it is to really just read everything, and 
treat a few key documents as bibles (TSref, TSconfig, TS by example, etc).

In this case it was an series of extremely simple questions, that WERE 
really blatantly obvious.  Its not a matter of us being smarter, more 
gifted, or more perceptive - its a matter of us having put in long long 
hours and huge amounts of effort to find the answers and figure out how 
it works.  None of use started with any point of reference, or history 
with typo3, but we have just worked really hard.  And I'm not implying 
that newbies are lazy or don't have the ability to comprehend typo3 
because I don't think that's the case. So as an experienced user that is 
what I find frustrating - users who are capable of finding the answer 
but simply send off a simple question and expect it to be answered for 
them in an hour.  And when told to look 'here' proceed to argue about it.

I agree about the lack of incomplete and missing documentation, but 
there is so much information out there for the system that needs to be 
organised.  That's why there is a documentation team, so if you want to 
help then offer, as I'm sure it would be accepted.  You will be working 
with some of the top notch people, and reading over lots of 
documentation, so chances are you will learn a lot really really quick.

Maybe as newbies you need to have mercy on us as well.  Don't frustrate 
us by a lack of effort to find the answer yourselves.  This list is 
extremely helpful and very very talented, but only when its not a waste 
of our time.

tk

Amy Stinson wrote:
> On 4 May 2005 at 23:29, Nagita Karunaratne wrote:
> 
> 
>>I thought the conventional wisdom was that if no one responded to your
>>post it was because it was blatantly obvious. Can't remember where i heard
>>that but is that not the case anymore?
> 
> 
> Ok folks, I'm going to tell you what is frustrating.  I download an extension that 
> doesn't have any documentation with it and I ask a question AFTER I've googled for 
> the answers and hit every web site that has a tutorial, because as a listowner I 
> understand how annoying it is to clutter up the list with redundant newbie questions. 
> I get ignored, not even a note saying you can find it in some other document.  I am 
> left having to read through everything in hopes that I *might* stumble upon the 
> answer, which wastes a lot of time.    
> 
> Now you tell me how I'm supposed to know to look in other documents to find the 
> answer if I can't find it googling, or I'm not supposed to ask because I'm supposed to 
> somehow _know_ it's located somewhere "obvious", just not in accompanying 
> documentation because there is none?  
> 
> As for blatantly obvious, that is all a matter of perception.  The best way I can 
> explain this is before I bought my car, I never really noticed my particular car out on 
> the street.  Once I bought it, I saw cars just like it everywhere.  Nothing changed 
> other than I now had a point of reference.
> 
> Since many of you have been with this project for a long time, the whole structure 
> makes sense to you.  As for those of us who are new to Typo3 and to it's concepts, 
> we don't have the same point of reference.  For those of you,"it goes without 
> saying", that is, it's obvious.  For those of us who don't share the history and the 
> points of reference, it's not obvious, it's confusing.  To expect new people to 
> understand right from the beginning can be a bit unrealistic.
> 
> Don't just assume we are lazy if we don't find it just like you did, or we don't see it, 
> just like you did, or we don't understand it, just like you did.  We may not be as 
> smart, gifted, and talented as you, but we still want to benefit from using Typo3.  Is 
> that too much to ask?
> 
> Have mercy on us.
> 
> Amy
> 
> 
> Amy Stinson
> Amy's Answers, LLC
> email:  astinson at amys-answers.com
> web:  http://www.amys-answers.com
> phone:  317.885-1741
> 
>