Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 16:13:43 -0700 (MST) From: Wes Peters - Softweyr LLC <softweyr@xmission.com> To: burton@bsampley.vip.best.com (Burton Sampley) Cc: questions@freebsd.org, www@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Mailing lists archives Message-ID: <199703282313.QAA25641@xmission.xmission.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970328131035.205B-100000@bsampley.vip.best.com> from "Burton Sampley" at Mar 28, 97 01:32:18 pm
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Burton Sampley raises several interesting points:
> One important point you might have overlooked about the 'How to get
> more..." message. This message is sent only to those individuals that
> already subscribe to the mailing lists. This does not get the message
> accross to the people who need this info, ie. the newbies (I think we've
> all been there) that go to the www.freebsd.org support page. Most of
> these people do not subscibe to the list, therefore how are they suppose
> the benifit from this info?
Perhaps we can modify the mail list manager so that an user who sends
a message to -questions and isn't on the subscription list automagically
gets a copy of "How to get the most of..." mailed back to them. This
will probably cut down the number of completely newbie requests to 2
or 3 per user.
> My second point. Before writing this message I visited the support page.
> The first paragraph basically says the mailing lists are the primary
> support machanism and when it doubt send your message to -questions. It
> does state that a search functions is available, but the presentation of
> the info points to the mailing list first and the search function as an
> alternative. I didn't look too hard, but maybe a version of the 'How to
> get more...' message should be posted on the website so that if the user
> chooses to send a message to the mailing list, they must read this message
> first.
I believe this should probably be reworded to reflect that you are
probably (99.5% likely) *not* encountering a problem for the first
time. Users should be directed to look through the archives first,
before sending email to thousands of users all over the world.
Postnews used to throw up this lovely message each time you tried to
post, saying something to the effect that this message is going to
travel over most of the civilized world, costing various people money,
are you sure the world cannot live without these comments. If everyone
kept this in mind each time they fire off a message, we'd keep the
signal to noise ratio here much higher.
> As an alternative, maybe a webpage can be created with the top ten (or
> twenty) most common questions and answers. I know this info is covered in
> the FAQ, but there is so much info in the FAQ, that some users feel it's
> easier to send a help message than plow through the FAQ. That's why I'm
> suggesting a limit of ten but no more than 20 items.
10 is probably better; 7 might be better yet. Most human beings,
confronted by any list with more that 7 items, will divide it into
chunks and ignore all chunks except the one that contains what they're
looking for. (Research by Card, Moran, and Newell).
A simple blurb beseeching new users to read, or at least browse the FAQ
and search for their problem in the -questions archives before posting
would be helpful as well.
> The first two that
> come to mind are the problem of the missing lib in emacs (from the 2.1.5R
> CDROM) and the infamous atapi.flp.
These both come immediately to mind as well. PPP routing and demaind
dialing, the original cause of this thread, is pretty well up there,
too. All three of these have been answered quite well recently and are
great questions for the "read this before asking yet another newbie
question" page.
I'll edit the support page and send my suggestions to the WebMaster. I
know I could just say to myself "Been there, done that," but often I
see these repeated questions go buy and several nosensical answers come
up each time, I really want to spare fellow FreeBSDers, even newbies,
the irritation of trying all these things that don't work.
I should gather my notes into one coherent set of instructions and
publish them all over the FreeBSD universe. I'll try to get this done
in the next week or so. In the meantime, thanks for a useful
discussion.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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