From owner-freebsd-chat  Wed Apr 21  0:29:21 1999
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To: John Baldwin <jobaldwi@vt.edu>
Cc: Rob <drifter@stratos.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Cross Posting... 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 20 Apr 1999 23:03:57 EDT."
             <XFMail.990420230357.jobaldwi@vt.edu> 
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 00:26:32 -0700
Message-ID: <13656.924679592@zippy.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
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X-Loop: FreeBSD.org

This is what I send to people who cross-post.  I intend to keep
sending it out, too. :-)

If you're receiving this message, it's because you recently
cross-posted something to more than one of the FreeBSD mailing lists,
either directly or as a result of not trimming the cc on a follow-up,
in a way that constitutes a direct violation of the posted mailing
list charters.

If you will be so good as to visit:

	http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/eresources:charters.html

You will see that posting to more than 2 lists, and frequently not
even that many, is not allowed.  A posting to even just two mailing
lists is only rarely necessary and almost certainly never appropriate
for simple questions, which should *always* go to the
freebsd-questions mailing list.

Why is this rule necessary?  Several reasons:

1. Many of the other mailing lists, most specifically freebsd-hackers,
   were originally created purely for discussion of technical issues
   and do not constitute forums for providing tech support.  Most
   cross-postings to -hackers and the other technical mailing lists are
   made in error by people thinking that they'll stand a better chance
   of getting an answer that way.  This may in fact be occasionally true,
   but the flood of questions is also DESTROYING the effectiveness of
   these mailing lists for their original purpose (general discussion)
   and, in the long run, will only force the deletion of those mailing
   lists as ineffective communications media, driving all technical
   discussion "underground" to avoid this problem.  This would be a
   sad loss for everyone and, in order to keep this from happening,
   the noise level in groups like -hackers MUST be significantly
   reduced, something which can only happen with user cooperation.

2. Most people, especially developers, subscribe to most (if not all)
   of the mailing lists and cross-posting only results in multiple copies
   being sent to each person.  On some days, as many as 20 or 30 messages
   are duplicates and that only makes it even harder to keep up with
   the FreeBSD email load (which is often >500 messages a day) for
   those people, one of the worst (and most typical) offenses being
   to post to both -current and -hackers, resulting in many thousands of
   duplications.  Remember: The more time these people have to spend reading
   email, the less time they have for development work and that impacts
   all of us.

Thanking you in advance for your cooperation,

- Jordan


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