Who is the site targeted for?

[ralph]

Is this site intended for developers, end-users, or both?

Is this site paid for by Sharp?

Thanks - Ralph

[offroadgeek]

this site is indended for all zaurus people, developers, users, people looking to buy one, whomever.

the site is not paid for by sharp.

if you have any suggestions or feedback, let me know!

[ralph]

How does one help pay for the site to continue?

Someone must have paid/paying  for the H/W and bandwidth for the site.

Thanks - Ralph

[offroadgeek]

yeah... that\'s me...

I\'ll be putting up a paypal link soon.

Thanks!

[karmmisht]

Dear offroadgeek and the other team members,

After just getting my first Z, a SL-5600, I was very disappointed to see the major Sharp sites disappear.  And, I was extremely happy that your site mirrored them.  This must have taken some effort and time on your part.

This leads me to wonder about your site.  Who are you?  What is the goal of your site?  What motivates you?  And, what is the expected longevity of your site?  Perhaps you should put up an \"About Us\" page.

Once again, I\'m grateful for all the information that is available here.  You\'re doing a great job.  If you are doing this on your own without commercial support, I would be willing to make a modest contribution given a way to do so.  Certainly don\'t want your site to all of sudden disappear like the Sharp sites!

[arnoldmm]

I second that, I don\'t know what many of us would do without this site ...

[Anonymous]

Definitely agree! That said I do have a some feedback and a suggestion. As a total newcomer to both Linux and Zaurus it is quite difficult to follow some of the advices given on this site, - the language and terms used often do not make any sense to me as a \"normal\" user with no programming experience whatsoever.

Would it be an idea to start a small dictionary for entry-level Zaurus-users? When I first started I did not even know what ROM, GIU, OPIE, tarballing, console, compile etc. etc. was (still don\'t for some of them) and a small dictionary would lower the already quite high entry-barriers for future Zaurus-users.

With best regards,

Jeppe

[Foxdie]

I\'ll try and answer the questions as I know the answers, but those questions can only be answered truly by offroadgeek himself.

The ZUG (Zaurus User Group) was set up to try and collate as many resources for the Zaurus as possible. Sites have been set up in the past but most often than not, they were lost / forgotten about or no longer maintained (The Devnet board is a good example).

The Zaurus User Group administration staff comprises as follows: offroadgeek (the founder and the guy that pays the electricity bills), Taim, tapjpa, badger and myself Foxdie. Although I can\'t speak for the others I can speak for myself. I\'m a 21 year old guy from the UK who has a limited knowledge of Linux (but I\'m a fast learner) who offered to lend a hand. I mainly help to look after the forums but if there\'s a problem and I spot it before the others I will try and help with it (as I\'m sure the other admins will).

I think our motivation mainly comes from the desire to help others. There are hundreds of people (too many to list) who use this site who take 5 minutes of their time to help out others who have queries in the forums, to me that says a lot! The ZUG Team may help keep the foundations solid but everything else is given by the site readers (aka you).

As for the longetivity, I think this site will be maintained for a long while yet! There is no sign of displeasure (in fact it\'s the opposite, offroadgeek is quite ecstatic that something he created that started out so small has become something big) in the ZUG from it\'s team and I for one (and I know the others will too) will stand by the site and keep it an informative and friendly place to visit on the web.

Thanks for your positive feedback on the site, it makes the ZUG team feel happy that their efforts are worthwhile  As for the \"About Us\" section, I will mention this to him when I see him next, I think it\'s a good idea.

[tapjpa]

Well here is why I got involved with the ZUG.

I wasn\'t happy with the direction of the Sharp DevNet, to much negitivity, no one was willing to give full open answers to us noobie\'s. OffRoadGeek came up with the idea of creating User Groups with an associated web site so I offered up my help.

This site today is the culmination of our original ideas and those of every ZUG member that has offered up feedback on it. I think that is one of the best parts of this site is that everyone has input and if the suggestions are reasonable they are implimented.

The most rewarding part of being a ZUG admin to me is watching this site grow from just 2 members ( offroadgeek and myself ) to almost 2000 memebrs to date. There is very little of the negitivity that I felt on the Sharp DevNet and our members are generally open to offer up as much help as needed by anyone from the advanced developer to the person just thinking of becoming a owner of the coveted Z.

I would also like to thank everyone for the positive words and please keep your input coming as this is what will help this great site continue to grow and prosper.

[offroadgeek]

karmmisht - first off, thanks for the question!  It\'s questions like this that push us to do more and grow.  I think an about us page makes perfect sense... and I\'ll work with the admins to pull together the info.  I think the questions - \"who are you\", and \"how long will you be here\", are particularly important due to the volatility of other sites recently.  

I\'ll put more details in the \"about us\" page, but the short answer is, I do this because I enjoy helping others, and because I\'m able to.  I happen to have the (financial) resources to support the site, and since I\'m a newbie programmer, I figure this is the one way that I can help the community.

As far as longevity, I hope we stay around forever.  I\'ve been with the same company for the last 5 years, and I don\'t plan on changing that soon.  So I plan to pay for the site for as long as I am able to.  I\'m working on a plan to help off-set the costs, but to be honest with you, I\'m not worried about it.  I have always been very hosest with the community about things (the database roll-back/fuck up in December, etc.), and I will continue to let you all know how we (and me) are doing.

We also have plans for some neat things soon.

Thanks and regards,

Michael

[karmmisht]

OK - thanks for all the replies.

Regards,
Mark

[Taim]

Oh, but wait! There\'s more!

Information was requested and thus I feel compelled to reply (late though it may be :).  

I found ZUG a while back when I was looking for alternative ROMs besides OZ and Sharpie.  The only place that seemed to have a reliable source for ROMs that was easy to find  was here.  I did a little digging through the forums, found them to be very helpful and polite.  Thus I stuck arround.

I forget exactly how I landed ZUG Team status.  Doesn\'t really matter.  To me, all we do is make sure everything is tidy and functioning normallly.  Nothing special except our shared love for the Z (although I do have 7x0 envy every now and then :).

I enjoy what I do, although my time has been extremely limited recently.  I volunteer for tons of activities, projects, etc.  I enjoy helping others, it\'s what I do best.

I have high hopes that the site will stay around forever.  Good people and good information reside here, it would be as shame to see any of it disappear.

[lardman]

I agree Jeppe that it might be a good idea to stick a link at the top of the forum page to a glossary of sorts to explain what the various acronyms mean (I know people could just google for them, but it would be nice for us to help them a little).

I presume this could point to the wiki which would make the maintenance, additions and corrections negligible.

In fact it would almost be worth placing a text banner at the top of the main forum page saying - read the FAQ, look at the glossary list, check the HowTos, then try a search, then post. This is not me being impatient with newbies, I just think that it should be made nice and clear for everyone\'s sake.


Si

[offroadgeek]

I agree Jeppe that it might be a good idea to stick a link at the top of the forum page to a glossary of sorts to explain what the various acronyms mean (I know people could just google for them, but it would be nice for us to help them a little).

I presume this could point to the wiki which would make the maintenance, additions and corrections negligible.

In fact it would almost be worth placing a text banner at the top of the main forum page saying - read the FAQ, look at the glossary list, check the HowTos, then try a search, then post. This is not me being impatient with newbies, I just think that it should be made nice and clear for everyone\'s sake.


Si

that\'s easy enough to do...  I\'m going offroading this weekend (in the snow weehee!), but I can work on this next week.

thank you everyone for the great suggestions and feedback!