Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 17:40:47 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig@spymac.com> Cc: grog@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Time to shut down this list? Message-ID: <20041228154047.GA29577@gothmog.gr> In-Reply-To: <200412271403.12158.krinklyfig@spymac.com> References: <6587631D.5034AB43.0F75C5EC@netscape.net> <200412271330.05504@zaphod.softweyr.com> <200412271403.12158.krinklyfig@spymac.com>
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On 2004-12-27 14:03, Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig@spymac.com> wrote: > I realize that there is a certain personality to the lists, and the > people on FreeBSD's lists are more courteous than most (at least in my > experience), but how do you convince someone it's worth it to ignore > the noise? Moreover, I've found that most people in such a situation > don't want to ask the -questions list due to the traffic, although I > suppose it's always possible to post to the list without joining it. The most important detail is the one you list near the end of this paragraph. It is not obligatory to _subscribe_ to the freebsd-questions list to post a question there :-) There are no traffic problems when you just post a few messages in a single thread. I know that people are reluctant to post to -questions. I just don't know why yet, but this is something that, in my opinion, _can_ be helped by the presence of the -newbies list. My relatively aggressive PR in favor of FreeBSD in the Linux companies I hang out with, has started to bear fruit. Many people here in Patras have now heard about FreeBSD. Some of them have also tried to use it for real work. Most of them seem very reluctant to post to the -questions list though. I have had a few conversations with those who don't post to mailing lists and tried to discuss this reluctancy they seem to have. One of the major causes of questions that remain unanswered is the fear of "asking stupid things". Which is silly, but that's the way the guys I've talked with think. When I point out to them that, in fact, "there is no stupid question" and that they should do at least the following (in this order): - Look at the existing FreeBSD documentation. - Ask me for pointers to the existing documentation. - Look at the documentation again. - Search Google. - Search the -questions archives. - Post to -questions if all else fails. They always feel thankful for at least having a clear 6-step plan for troubleshooting. THIS is what a newbie needs most of the time. Not the real details of setting up a firewall with PF or IPFILTER, not all the gory details of IP routing and network address translation, not even the delicate instructions for editing `inetd.conf' or even `rc.conf'. Most of the time, the newbies I've had to deal with have questions that they don't know what to do about. All they need is a pointer towards the docs or just a friendly pat in the back and a couple of kind words: "Oh, that's ok. You should read the manpage of `inetd.conf'. If you need more help with that, post to -questions, since I haven't ever tinkered with FOOBAR services myself". I think that -newbies should not provide technical answers, detailed and fancy as -questions. But it may make a huge difference, when people don't know what to do about some problem they have, by providing exactly this sort of guidance: a mini summary of what can and should be done. The rest of the time, we can brag about our accomplishments as usual (which, admittedly, happens very rarely these days) :-) - Giorgos
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