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Date:      Thu, 7 Sep 2000 10:44:22 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Rick Hamell <hamellr@heorot.1nova.com>
To:        David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>
Cc:        freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: dos floppies
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0009071015180.8503-100000@heorot.1nova.com>
In-Reply-To: <39B92309.C2C65CE7@acuson.com>

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> So now the question arises, what is the possibility of creating a
> freebsd-newbies-questions list?

	Probally Zilch... this list was highly contested at it's
creation. It only came into creation on the condition that NO -question
-questions were to be asked here. There are several reasons for
this; first the FreeBSD team only wants ONE point of contact for
questions, it keeps traffic down (from repeated messages,) it allows
people answering your questions to track other's answers in same
forum. It's only one place to search in the search engine, you get a wider
pool of talent to draw your answers from. Many people (myself
included,) who wish to help do not really have the time to monitor yet
another mail list. 
	And most importantly, Newbies are exactly that, they
might accidently give the wrong answer to a question, thereby accidently
causing somebody a great deal of pain and suffering. (I've seen that
several times here.) By asking the question in a group monitored by
"experts" and even many members of the Core Team itself, you're going to
be more likely to get the correct answer. Also, many, many, many of the
questions I've seen asked here, are NOT -newbie questions by any stretch
of the imagination! :)

> A) people subscribing to -questions to get answers to complicated
> on how to mount DOS floppies.

	This is a false assumtion. The vast amount of people in -questions
like to see these, it means that FreeBSD is getting a bigger following,
and that their efforts are being at least appreciated... Again, most
people really do want to help. 

> B) people wanting to know how to mount DOS floppies don't want to know
> about the intricacies of L, U and A.

	This is (IMHO) another incorrect assumption. I've found that
reading other messages has helped me in the future fix other
problems. (I.e., I had no idea there were two ways to do Firewalls,
until I saw someone mention the other, easier to configure way!) It's also
helped me answer other people's questions.

> C) the message volume in -questions is extremely high.

	Again, IMHO... 100-200 questions a day is not extremely high...I
get between 600-1000 messages a day... Granted I scan subject line for a
good portion of them, but I've learned a lot from it.... (I use to get
2000 or more messages a day but found that to be too many for me... :)
	In my opinion this group -newbies has outlived it's orginal
intentions. In fact I believe it never lived UP to it's orginal
Intentions. But I believe it's orginal purpose certainly a valid one, and
have lately been trying to enforce it's orginal purpose. Othewise this
group will be removed by the moderators.

					Rick



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