User talk:Vicjoe

Does everybody understand the importance of the Internet for the growth of human knowledge? Probably intuitively, but it may not occur to all that due to the a-locational, asynchronous, non-status hierarchical nature of Internet/Web communication (examplified by the Wiki movement in particular), the potential for truly quantum leaps in knowledge are being realized. And, nobody is excluded, everyone has the opportunity to add to the fund of human knowledge, PhDs not required (but welcome, along with everyone else). Knowledge grows by an evolutionary process of putting something out there, receiving feedback, responding, back to the drawing board so to speak, reformulating, learning from one's and others' experience, and distilling a problem to its finest points. This of course assumes maturity and avoiding flaming in discussion, all based on an assumption of mutual respect.

It is all about collaboration that challenges us and enriches us, paradoxically while typing alone at one's computer there is a "mindspeak" going on that links to a myriad of other human minds, so we're never really alone. Take a recent example that brought me here: I am a Mac user, and wanted to use Thunderbird as my e-mail client. It had all the powerful features I wanted, but I also had a slew of messages sitting on my computer tied to Apple's Mail.app client. I discovered that the available advice on how to import these messages was no longer applicable due to a change in the way Apple's program stored messages.

So, I proceeded to search for assistance, and eventually found a free program that would convert Apple's new format to one that was usable in Thunderbird. The program did part of the job, but additional steps had to be devised to actually complete the conversion. With encouragement from the mozillazine help forum, I figured out the additional steps and wrote an article on my discovery. I felt this was reciprocal pay-back for all the clues and support given me to accomplish my goal. But, once I'd written the article, I was daunted by the documentation guidelines for the knowledge base, so posted my missive in the forum instead, asking that someone with experience in preparing articles for the kb in "wiki" style edit my work. I feel sure that what I have written will be improved upon and end up, in this case, benefitting many Mac users. It has been a small taste of the challenges and satisfactions of online collaboration.

For now, until my article is reviewed and cleaned up by one of the pro's, it can be found at: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2003195#2003195

It feels good to give back after finding and using so much enriching material.

Hi vicjoe. I just posted a comment in the forum thread to the effect that if you could please paste your writeup into the relevent article here in the knowledge base, someone will take care of the formatting etc. for you. Cheers. --wintogreen 08:00, 8 January 2006 (UTC)