The Newbie Test

[Marc Kaplan]

For those of you who do not subscribe to the Planet Ubuntu RSS feed,
you probably should.  It is quite useful.  The following blog posting
just showed up in the feed and I think it might be something that
could be up for discussion:

http://www.ndeschildre.net/2008/11/17/community-infrastructure-the-newbie-test/

First of all, I would like to give us props for this:

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3. Getting support : How easily do I find these infos? how noob-friendly is it?

Ubuntu : Very good. Prominent "get support" link, forums are put
first, before IRC and mailing lists. All localized forums are linked.
The main Ubuntu forum website has a "Absolute Beginner Talk" section.
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However, this kinda stood out for me:

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6. Getting infos on available software: I'm a noob, I don't know the
names of the best programs to use : I want to get the names of the
best programs. This has to be relativized since users can also get
infos from their packaging tool.

Ubuntu : Poor. No such thing. packages.ubuntu.com is advertized
nowhere and unusable from a noob point of view.
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I think he's got a point.  I see an email address on
"packages.ubuntu.com" (whom I am CC'ing on this email with the hope he
will respond to our mailing list), and was wondering if anyone is
familiar with either this page/site/project?

What would you think about getting http://packages.ubuntu.com/ to look
more user-friendly, like:
"https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Applications"???

Is this something for the docs team, or is this a completely separate
team project?  If so, which team should I be communicating with?

Marc K.