Daemon News '199810' : '"<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> "'

The new newbies

Sue Blake

A small band of FreeBSD users are working together in the shadows, observing, honing their skills, building their numbers, and plotting their future. One day soon, as cron strikes midnight, they will emerge from the shadows with the power to serve.

Who are the new newbies, and where do they come from? What are they offering? What do they want? Where will they fit in?
This is one newbie's view of the changes we're all going through.

FreeBSD's new user population is increasing fast, and changing even faster. In previous years, most new users already knew their way around a unix system and were more interested in running servers in a production environment than enjoying the use of a personal workstation. Most of the learning and support centred around getting used to the differences between FreeBSD and another type of unix. Most felt comfortable around C and found it provided a common reference point in communication, either by analogy or with direct reference to the source code. That style is still evident in many man pages, for example. This is an unknown and foreign world to many of the people who have been attracted to FreeBSD recently.

Our community is our strength. As a new crowd arrives, they bring change. Change can be seen as a threat to a system that is already working well, or it can be grasped as an opportunity to achieve more than was possible before. People at the upper end of the experience spectrum, who had it all under control, now have to deal with the rapid changes in the community. Where a few talented people were doing great slabs of work, new people will arrive with smaller offerings, hundreds of them. New skills and structures are required to take full advantage of these offerings. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the old timers are learners too, in a community growing so fast that everyone feels like a newbie.

How it began

The increase in the number of new FreeBSD users is due to a number of factors. FreeBSD's popularity is growing rapidly. Over the last couple of years FreeBSD has become much easier to install, allowing people with less background to have a go. The documentation has been improved and expanded, and real efforts are going into making documents fathomable to newbies. Computers have become affordable to students and home users, and more people are becoming dissatisfied with their current operating systems.

Who are the new newbies?

The group I refer to as "new newbies" shows a wide range of characteristics, but they are all unlike most of the newbies of previous years. Their numbers are growing rapidly, and so far they are largely unseen.

The new newbies are found in their homes, in their small businesses, and at new jobs that need new skills. They come from all age groups, all backgrounds, and bring with them all manner of expectations, some more realistic than others.

They might already have slight familiarity with FreeBSD, or unix, or both, but more often neither. They are not necessarily familiar with the use of mailing lists or even email, and might be very new to the Internet.

Their Internet connections, if they have them, are typically slow, unreliable, temporary, and can be quite expensive. A slow modem dial-up from home might be charged by the minute or by bandwidth, depending which country they're in and what deal they've managed to obtain. Some unfortunates only have an account with a provider who is known to encourage spam, because nobody has yet explained to them the true meaning of "free".

More and more people are trying FreeBSD after realising that there must be a better way than battling with their current operating system. Some move to FreeBSD with only a few months of computer experience, and all of that in a Microsoft or Macintosh GUI. Others go to Linux first, then move across to FreeBSD with a few basic skills and a swag full of preconceptions. They might already have a high level of competency and experience in their old environment, and have to start over again when they get here.

Some people install FreeBSD simply to learn something about unix. They are students, preparing to be students, or just curious.

There are people with new expensive computers who want an operating system that will show off their hardware, and people who want an operating system that won't keel over on an old 386. With so many home users, old equipment is probably more common than it was with the previous newbies. Consider, for example, how often you buy a new car, TV, or fridge. At the same time, we are now seeing people who purchase their first home computer already knowing that they don't want to use Microsoft.

A lot of new people come prepared to put in considerable effort to learn and explore the system on their own, since they might not have any background or friends to help them. This is an adventure. They also differ from the old FreeBSD users in that they can afford to take big risks, each disaster being seen as a valuable learning opportunity rather than as a business tragedy.

Then there's the new computer users who drift in by accident, not at all sure what it is that they've gotten into, but once they get over the shock they hang around. And of course there's the more experienced people who we've attracted all along, some of them with a lot of unix experience but unfamiliar with PC hardware.

The new newbies arrive with no understanding of community, free software, quality, or working non-competitively within a team. They don't know the history or the culture. In the absence of information, it is reasonable for them to assume that FreeBSD works like the rest of their world: you pay and you get service, if there's no service you complain, and when you get a freebie it is for promotional purposes. Free or not, you're still a customer and your role is to demand service, not to offer it. Within our community, that doesn't sound good, but take their perspective. They are acting correctly within the known rules of the only society that they have so far been made aware of. It does not mean they won't prefer ours.

Sometimes they want to make a contribution but they think that any offer to help from a newbie would be met with wild laughter. Those with a more positive outlook might search in vain for the management hierarchy to work out who to ask for permission before doing what is considered an everyday act of membership by the old crowd. Those with a more negative outlook might go off and do something elsewhere, in deliberate competition to the existing community efforts, because they have not been made aware that they are already a part of it. Their actions are in accordance with best practice in the rest of their world.

Where will they fit in?

As the new newbies enter the existing community they will take on roles according to their abilities. These roles might not have existed before, or need to be shared for the first time, or be roles held by people who are ready to move on to other roles.

With little or no experience newbies can welcome other newbies and share resources, help with review of documentation for newbie-friendliness, participate in advocacy activities. All that is required for these tasks is willingness and a sense of community.

Soon today's newbies will be contributing in other ways. They will be the future supporters, developers, and writers of documentation, and while they're building up their skills, they're looking for new opportunities to share what little they have. Often these opportunities have not existed at that level, and need to be created.

Newbies are quite capable of learning the technical aspects on their own, and more than willing to do so. Most newbies would rather be seen as contributors than bludgers, seek to hide their ignorance from public scrutiny, and can't wait to have their efforts appreciated by others. They tend to keep out of sight as much as possible while learning is going on. This leads to two unfortunate consequences.

Newbies who work on their own are cut off from learning the one thing that they do need others to teach them: learning about what it means to be part of a community and how ours works. At the same time, it exposes the rest of the community to a minority of waifs and strays whose uncharacteristic behaviour is taken to represent that of all newbies.

To be an asset rather than a liability, newbies have to feel they fit in, and be seen as fitting in by others. This takes deliberate effort and understanding from both sides.

What do newbies have to do?

Understand how the community works. Observe, participate, look for signs of responsibility not authority, join mailing lists and keep up with what's going on, contribute where you can.
Become confident. Through understanding the community, develop the preferred social and technical skills, then flaunt them.
Develop short and long term goals. Don't try to do too much at once, but don't sell yourself short either. Never say you'll do more than you know for sure you can. Never give up on the hard things, there's always next year.
Become a self-directed learner. The more well you can organise your own learning, the quicker you will reach your short and long term goals. If you can't find suitable documentation for something and work it out yourself, write it down so that others can benefit.
Resist rabid evangelism. It's OK to be excited about FreeBSD, but don't get carried away. There's plenty of room in this world for other views.
Join in! If you assume that nobody wants you, nobody will want you. It's no use waiting for someone to notice you're there. If you want in, get in.
Remember what it was like to be new. There is a serious shortage of people who can do that as they advance. Soon enough you'll be facing a new generation of newbies yourself.
Give other newbies a hand. Visit their web pages, IRC channels, offer feedback on their writing, offer your opinion and relate your experiences with documentation you have used, show you appreciate what they're doing.

How can others help?

Make them feel valued as part of the community, and help them to see how it operates because they probably haven't got a clue. Set a good example.
Avoid applying stereotypes or guessing motives. Beware, they might be willing to take on any characteristics that you expect of them. Newbies often lack self esteem for obvious reasons, and public embarrassment can be devastating.
Allow new people to change slowly, in knowledge skills and attitudes. Be aware that they are learning about themselves in this new environment and be ready to forgive their errors as soon as they forgive themselves.
Newbies may be fed occasionally, if they ask or if impending peril is obvious. The rest of the time, give them the space to find their own way and be proud of making their own discoveries. Avoid using newbies as an audience to demonstrate your skill and compassion, however helpful that might seem to both parties in the short term.
Consider your attitude towards newbies carefully. If you don't like someone, simply ignore that individual. If you like having newbies around, welcome their feedback.
Be ready to accept contributions, but be honest about quality. Be aware that the confident-sounding person you're talking to might in fact be a newbie.
If you can't remember what it was like to be new, give them the benefit of the doubt. If you can remember, don't assume they experience it the same way you did.
Give newbies a hand in the ways that really matter. Accept them as people with common goals, show you're glad they're part of the community, and be prepared to learn from them too.