Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
[...] So does this mean that the Debian community, while helpful to newbies that know enough how to ask a question, would be happier if newbies whodon't just went to one of those projects instead?
I hope not! Perhaps we need a debian-newbie-users list? It would need some more-experienced users prepared to monitor the list and offer "gentle" advice. The NewbieDOC project used to have a list like this. Unfortunately, it ceased to function as it lost a critical mass of more-experienced users, and had to be closed a couple of years ago.
-- Chris.