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Date:      Sun, 23 Apr 1995 16:30:48 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Julian Elischer <julian@ref.tfs.com>
To:        hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Gating hackers into the newsgroups
Message-ID:  <199504232330.QAA28279@ref.tfs.com>
In-Reply-To: <199504232117.XAA02403@jette.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Apr 23, 95 11:17:12 pm

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> 
> > 
> >   The hackers list is already near 10 MB / month.  I won't like to see
> >   it further bloated.
> > 
> > The -hackers mailing list reads like a newsgroup anyways, so two-way
> > gating will allow you to unsubscribe from -hackers and just read the
> > articles in the newsgroup you're interested in following.
> 
> I still don't like it.  Usenet is too slow to respond in a timely
> fashion, at least at this end of the world here.
> 
> A fully two-way gateway would further bloat the list.  80 % of the
> questions asked in comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc can easily be answered
> by 80 % of the user base out there.  There is absolutely no need to ask
> this kind of stuff to the _developers_ of the system.  Most of the
> people apparently lack a good unix introduction.  The easier our
> install procedure will become, the larger this part of the newsgroup
> questions will grow.  This is not to say that this is a bad thing,
> but IMHO, Usenet is better suited for a user <-> user support, while
> the mailing lists provide for a way to have user <-> developer
> interaction.  We do need both.
> 
Ok but what aare we trying to achieve?
1/ we want people looking at the usenet groups to decide which OS
to get to realise that there is a lot of support with FreeBSD. 
(and a lot of users)

2/ we want people who just 'check-out' the news group, to stay current 
to see answers to problems and not just problems
It's largely a PR exercise as well as a real tech-support issue.

3/ We don't want people answering on the newsgroup if the 
original posting was in the mailing list..


My suggestion:

'questions' is gated to the news group by being sent to an alias
'news'

all 'news' items have the following headder tacked on the FRONT of them
before being gated to usenet:

****************************************************************************
* This article has been forwarded to USENET from the FreeBSD-questions     *
* mailing list. It's appearance here on USENET is for informational        *
* purposes only. Replies to USENET on this topic will NOT be seen          *
* by the original posters. to reply, send mail to:                         *
* FreeBSD-questions@FreeBSD.org                                            *
* send mail to majordome@FreeBSD.org, stating 'help' for more information  *
****************************************************************************

Note: this is a ONE WAY gate, that allows people to see the activity
and makes it explicitly known what to do to respond..

julian



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