new member

[mark]

Greetings all!

I just joined the Ubuntu Doc team a few days ago and thought I'd throw
a quick note to the list as a small means of introduction. 

I first starting using GNU/Linux approx 10+ years ago (can't remember
for sure - I'm _terrible_ at time references) at a time when it was
quite rough around the edges. Through perseverance and lots of reading
and a lot of time on IRC I got a solid system set up, and within 6-9
months (there's that time thing again) I was able to completely abandon
Windows and have never looked back.

Getting a smooth GNU/Linux system working at a time when it was much
less mature was truly a learning experience, and while I would never
say I became a "guru" I can say that I was a fairly competent "power
user."

There came a point where I was _completely_ away from computers for 3,
maybe 4 years (long story) and unfortunately much of what I had
learned evaporated, though I am surprised from time to time of with
the (often) trivial snippets of knowledge rise to the surface. About 6
months ago purchased a laptop (Dell Inspiron 700m) and immediately put
XUbuntu 8.04 on it. Wow! What a revelation! EVERYTHING just worked,
right out of the box! Not the Linux I knew from years ago! Kudos to all
who've worked on this OS.

So, that's how I've ended up here. While my knowledge at this point is
rather weak, I'd still like to contribute where possible. I've been
looking over the doc team pages the last few days, and, frankly, I must
say that I have been a bit confused but I think I've now got a decent
general understanding of the structure and goals. It seems to me that a
good place for me to start is with CategoryCleanup. At first I fretted
over not having enough technical knowledge to decide correctly which tag
would best suit the page(s) in question, or whether they needed a tag
at all. After realizing that the reason these articles are in
CategoryCleanup to begin with is because 'someone' decided they needed
patching up - all I have to do is try to figure out for which reason
they determined that - I relaxed and am ready to jump in (I think).

One question before I start with tagging: after I've made a
modification will the article in question be 'automagically' taken off
the list [0]? Or do I need to take another step to have it removed?
Or something else entirely?

I would like to comment, lastly, on a very recent mailing from Phil
Bull regarding the Installation Guide: It sounds _exactly_ like the
kind of project I would like to be involved in, but I know enough to
know that I don't know enough to really be of any true help. :-) At
least, not yet.

Pardon my verbosity, and kind regards to all!

cheers
mark strawser

[0] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CategoryCleanup