From owner-freebsd-stable Thu Oct 7 11:40:44 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from blackhelicopters.org (geburah.blackhelicopters.org [209.69.178.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AD79214CE0 for ; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:40:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org) Received: (from mwlucas@localhost) by blackhelicopters.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA25123 for stable@freebsd.org; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 14:40:36 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from mwlucas) From: Michael Lucas Message-Id: <199910071840.OAA25123@blackhelicopters.org> Subject: Roasting Newbies To: stable@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 14:40:36 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL43 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello, everyone, We recently had a flamefest on -hackers wherein a newbie was roasted, toasted, and flambe'd. Some people got annoyed at a question that should have probably been asked on -questions, and a newbie went away thinking that FreeBSD geeks were jerks. He might change his opinion in the future. Maybe not. There wasn't anything exceptional about this particular argument, except that it was the one that finally ticked me off enough to try to do something about it. I've written up an article, aimed at the FreeBSD newbie. It explains what they should do before mailing any FreeBSD mailing list, what to do with the answer, and how to write an effective message. It's at: http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~dispatch/bsd-self-help.html Please, before you burn some new FreeBSD user out of the sky, think about sending them here. Send them a copy of this, I don't care. But it's probably more effective to explain to the new user what they need to do to have their problems be taken seriously, than to roast them alive. Since none of us have the patience to do that again and again, we might as well put it on the web. ==ml PS: If it's someone we don't *want* using FreeBSD, well, then I suppose you'll just have to flame them. ;) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message