[sweetbacon]

> discussing or (even better) trying to teach it to someone else is extremely effective.

Whenever I have to learn a new OS, system, tool, programming language, etc: if I have trouble with it, I just write up a training manual as if I were also tasked with teaching others. What I end up with is a customized courseware for just me that I can refer back to at any time. Time consuming, but very effective for me.

[jodrellblank]

I wonder if the main benefit of blogs and tutorials is for the writer, not the reader.

This makes me wonder about the damage FAQs do to a community; where once there was a continual flow of new people needing newbie explanations - and a continual flow of not-quite-newbies benefiting from writing those explanations over and over, but different people each time, and implicitly being welcoming through that interaction - there is instead an implicitly unwelcoming response with a link to a FAQ. A FAQ which is dauntingly large due to its attempt to be comprehensive, but never deleted and refreshed, so getting ever more outdated and cruftier.