Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 18:08:53 +0100 (BST) From: David Marsh <drmarsh@bigfoot.com> To: Nik Clayton <nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Newbies FAK Message-ID: <XFMail.980726205418.drmarsh@bigfoot.com> In-Reply-To: <19980724005343.42939@nothing-going-on.org>
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Hi Nik, On 23-Jul-98 Nik Clayton wrote: >On Thu, Jul 23, 1998 at 11:00:08PM +0100, David Marsh wrote: >> I'm not sure why the decision has been made to direct *all* questions >> to FreeBSD-questions. > >In a nutshell; > > 1. It means that people that want to ask questions only have one list > to post to, they don't need to cross-post to both lists. > > 2. People that want to answer questions only have to read one list. > Now that the 'nature' of -questions has been explained to me, perhaps my question was a bit inappropriate. I was thinking from the perspective of a relative newbie, that there would be likely to be some things I'd want to ask about that would be almost trivial to experienced users, and would probably end up adding to the 'chaff' on -questions. But if the 'wise ones' of -questions are happy to be an 'all-comers' Official Support List, for any and all types of questioning (well, apart from those for which there are other specific lists), and if I'm allowed to sleep easily knowing that I don't _have_ to subscribe to questions at all times, then maybe I feel all right about asking my (possibly dumb) questions on questions (politely requesting a cc: response) without having to read through all the rest of the articles myself. I really don't know how the wise ones manage to keep up with the barrage of queries: they must have some pretty damn impressive mail filters/junkers set up! ;-) > 3. The nature of the audience on -questions hopefully ensures that the > information you receive is more accurate. One of my reasons for > being on this list is to correct mis-information if it's posted. > Typically, I do this by mailing the person that posted the > mis-information, explaining why it's wrong, and then let them > followup back to the list with the right information. That's a clever way of doing it :-) >> Where is there a good tutorial on the more arcane features of 'vi' >> (and one that's more readable and has more examples than `man vi')? > >IMHO, that's borderline. Doubtless other people will disagree. >Something like > > "So, what did you guys use when you were learning 'vi'?" > >is more on the mark. I see what you mean, but don't I strike off some 'clueless' points in showing that I'd checked the basic documentation and had a vague idea at least of knowing what kind of thing I should have been looking for? > >> Does anybody know where I can get StarOffice documentation? >> www.stardivision.com doesn't seem to have any. > >Nothing to do with being new to FreeBSD, so off topic for this list. >Again, >IMHO. I do take your point here, and I wasn't really sure if this would be appropriate as it's not _really_ a 'core' FreeBSD-specific issue. The possible problem here (and it's one that's likely to get bigger, I fear) is that the increasing number of home-user dial-up newbies can only get intermittent net access using expensive phone calls. I know it's a little lazy to only do the briefest of web searches, and also that it's much easier to ask for help on an email list or newsgroup which gets *automatically* stored up and dumped onto your computer, in order to reduce online time, but long browsing sessions could end up being hugely expensive otherwise. The real downside (?!) to this, that I can see coming to me, is that because the Unix software world is (fortunately!) still very large and diverse is that I might end up having to subscribe to dozens of newsgroups and lists to keep track of various applications or 'genres' of applications. And then of course, I have to work out whether a given application has been ported to FreeBSD, or if not, whether it's likely to be a simple task that I could achieve myself.. But back to the StarOffice documentation issue: the Linux version does run on FreeBSD, but I can't seem to find any documentation for it: I've checked StarDivision's website, and can't see any there, and the next question is, either where do I find the docs, or which newsgroup/list would I subscribe to find answers? It would seem logical to me to at least make initial enquiries among the FreeBSD community (as there are other people using these programs), and I suppose then, the question is: is a documentation question a -newbies or a -questions question? >> So I'm wondering if -questions really is different in this case? >> Do people not mind emailing answers directly to NON-subscribing >> questioners? On most other lists that would be considered rude. > >-questions is a bit different in this case. Apart from anything else, >I believe most of the question answerers include a cc: back to the >original questioner when they reply. It's just the done thing. I realise this now, and certainly, upon re-reading Greg Lehey's 'How to ask a question.." posting, it does mention towards the end about cc:ing to the original questioner.. but doesn't make it clear *why* you should do this. It's only now that I realise that it isn't necessarily obligatory to subscribe to -questions, and that cc:ing is obviously essential for people who do use it as a 'support desk' and don't take the full list. Likewise this issue isn't mentioned at all in the list guidelines you get back from majordomo, or in the Handbook. Perhaps the majordomo guidelines should be updated to mention these aspects of the list, and draw attention to the courtesy "cc:" 'rule'? >I throw away perhaps 70% of -questions unread, based on the subject lines. >I skim the remaining 30%, looking for stuff that I might need to know >one day, or answering those questions that I can. That's pretty much what I'm doing, but sifting through it all is very time-consuming. I'm going to ask on my mailer's mailing-list about how I can make it filter out topics I'm not interested in. [Possible newbie advice: I use xfmail, which is pretty friendly, and it does have a support list. It can be set to post directly to my ISP's server, so I don't (yet) have to really put the effort into fixing my bogus sendmail configuration ;-)] >I'm subscribed to almost all the FreeBSD mailing lists. Takes me about >an hour and a half each day, most of which is spent deleting messages. eek! >> I think that having a single monolithic -questions group isn't the best >> way to deal with things, as it becomes too much for people to keep up >> with, not least the long-term answerers themselves, I'm sure. > >Possibly not. There are subsets of -questions for some topics. For >example, the -scsi and -multimedia lists. If you were to post a >question to -questions along the line of "Which video card should I get >to do OpenGL" (or something like that) you'd probably be redirected to >the -multimedia mailing list. > >There's probably room for some more mailing lists along these lines, >possible a -ppp or -network for networking related problems, and so on. >If you want to start a discussion about this in -questions, feel free. I'm not /so/ sure if I'll do this now that the 'ethos' of -questions has been explained to me. But I might do: I think it might be easier if there were a number of extra lists that can 'focus' the queries a little better (such as the examples you've given above), but obviously that would have to have the consent of the answerers to be willing to track possibly extra lists in order to share their knowledge on specific issues. >> There doesn't seem to be much discussion going on, unfortunately. > >My local copy of this list shows 2,441 messages since I subscribed, >which is roughly 20 a day. There was quite a vocal discussion about >various topics recently. That must have been before I subscribed: I've only been on the list for a couple of weeks - admittedly not long enough to be a proper sample period, but compared to the hundreds of articles -questions generates each day, that's pretty quiet :-) Dave. --- David Marsh,drmarsh@bigfoot.comPLEX | http://squelch.home.ml.org/ | Glasgow/Glaschu, Scotland. *If urgent, phone: +44 141 400-0577*| > CYCLEWAY: cycle activism GB/IE: http://squelch.home.ml.org/cycleway/ < > includes bikes on public transport, & cycle organisation directories < To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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