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Date:      Sun, 1 Mar 1998 13:32:34 +1030
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: newbies mailing list
Message-ID:  <19980301133234.11473@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <19980301105650.47895@welearn.com.au>; from Sue Blake on Sun, Mar 01, 1998 at 10:56:51AM %2B1100
References:  <19980301105650.47895@welearn.com.au>

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On Sun,  1 March 1998 at 10:56:51 +1100, Sue Blake wrote:
>
> I am a newbie and that's not going to change for quite a while. For many
> reasons I want to talk to other newbies in a newbie environment.

I skimmed over this a while back, and I though "I wonder what Sue
Blake will think of this".  I suppose I've stopped wondering.

> It's hard to explain my reasons and you'll probably find this hard to
> understand, but I ask you for the moment just to accept that the need might
> be felt to exist, at least for some people. Freebsd-questions is good and
> useful, and so is the FAQ etc, but there's still something missing.

I think you'll find that something will continue to be missing.  I've
thought about these problems, too, but I haven't come up with a useful
solution.  Life's a bitch.

> I've never had a great deal of success with the mailing list search (I tend
> to get the questions but not the answers), but found the topic of a mailing
> list for newbies raised briefly last October, and some reference to previous
> discussions which were not visible.

Now *that* might be a problem that could be addressed.  I find the
mailing list search pretty useless, too.

> I have a lot of ideas about what I'd like to see, but most great
> ideas to date have turned out to be crap in the light of further
> information.  Could someone please summarise the argument against a
> mailing list for newbies before I either press for one to be created
> or do it myself.

I think that I could summarize the arguments against with "the blind
leading the blind".  At least in -questions you have a couple of
one-eyed men.  You also have a number of people who can scare newbies
off, sure, but that will happen even if there's a newbies list.

At the moment, I have concerns about the overlap between -questions
and -hackers (see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html).  A newbies
list would just compound the problem.

On the other hand, I can't really see much advantage from a newbies
list.  Maybe you should present more arguments.

Greg


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