From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Mar 28 10:40:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA26082 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 28 Mar 1997 10:40:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from xmission.xmission.com (softweyr@xmission.xmission.com [198.60.22.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA26077 for ; Fri, 28 Mar 1997 10:40:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from softweyr@localhost) by xmission.xmission.com (8.8.5/8.7.5) id LAA10068; Fri, 28 Mar 1997 11:40:32 -0700 (MST) From: Wes Peters - Softweyr LLC Message-Id: <199703281840.LAA10068@xmission.xmission.com> Subject: Re: Mailing lists archives To: andrew@python.shoal.net.au (Andrew Perry) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 11:40:31 -0700 (MST) Cc: questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Andrew Perry" at Mar 28, 97 03:27:40 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I recently sniveled: % GENERAL FREEBSD_QUESTIONS USAGE NOTE: % You should search for this message in the mail archives before sending % it to 50,000 people or so via email; this subject has been discussed ad % nauseum. Andrew Perry replied: > I couldn't agree with you more, however, having asked this particular > question myself, and other equally overasked questions, I think we should > address what I see as the problem. > > When you look around on the FreeBSD sites for help, the mailing lists, > especially "questions" are put forward as the primary support while the > "search the archives" option is more of an aside. Maybe it should be > stressed on this page that you CAN ask on questions for help (as we're > such a friendly bunch of people), but FIRST one should search the archive > to see if it's been asked before. (and answered) Good point. The mailing lists are listed much more prominently on the web site and the CD-ROM booklet than the mail archives. On the other hand, this topic is mentioned every month in the 'How to get more out of the FreeBSD mailing lists' message. On the other hand, this particular question has been asked 3 - 5 times every week for nearly three months now. Having personally answered it a number of times, it is really starting to get redundant. I know that many of the people picking up FreeBSD these days are new to the net as well as UNIX, but it really is quite disturbing to see the social structure that used to be so much a part of internet communications breaking down so rapidly. I am amazed (and disappointed) by the number of people these days who will jump into a mailing list or newsgroup without *any* idea of what happens there on a daily basis. Perhaps if *some* of the newbies lurked in this group for a week or two, they'd see something about these "archives" and go seek them out before asking the same perfectly good question that was asked, and answered, once every day the week before. > Also maybe we should try and encourage people to have more relevant > subject lines to make the search option a little more friendly. Given the number of mesages here every day with *no* subject, or a subject of "Question" or "Problem", I don't see this happening any time soon. Your best bet is to not waste your time with subject-line searches. If you have a problem with PPP and routing, search for PPP and routing in the message bodies. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com