From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Jul 16 11:17:25 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 242E837B447 for ; Tue, 16 Jul 2002 11:17:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.gmx.net (mail.gmx.net [213.165.64.20]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id BC50B43E42 for ; Tue, 16 Jul 2002 11:17:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net) Received: (qmail 4329 invoked by uid 0); 16 Jul 2002 18:17:11 -0000 Received: from p5091030c.dip0.t-ipconnect.de (HELO mail.gsinet.sittig.org) (80.145.3.12) by mail.gmx.net (mp007-rz3) with SMTP; 16 Jul 2002 18:17:11 -0000 Received: (qmail 14612 invoked from network); 16 Jul 2002 17:56:33 -0000 Received: from shell.gsinet.sittig.org (192.168.11.153) by mail.gsinet.sittig.org with SMTP; 16 Jul 2002 17:56:33 -0000 Received: (from sittig@localhost) by shell.gsinet.sittig.org (8.11.3/8.11.3) id g6GHuOh14599 for freebsd-stable@freebsd.org; Tue, 16 Jul 2002 19:56:24 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from sittig) Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 19:56:24 +0200 From: Gerhard Sittig To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: subscribe freebsd-stable Message-ID: <20020716195624.X1494@shell.gsinet.sittig.org> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <200207152133.g6FLXQb72508@osvald.void.ru> <20020716053638.A21324@grybel.mayn.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20020716053638.A21324@grybel.mayn.de>; from 520002375936-0001@t-online.de on Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 05:36:38AM +0200 Organization: System Defenestrators Inc. Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 05:36 +0200, Linus wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 01:33:26AM +0400, krok wrote: > > subscribe freebsd-stable > > How about changing the passage in the FreeBSD-Handbook as to less > misleading/confusing the people who want to (un)subscribe to various > freebsd-MLs? New users easily get confused with 'freebsd-xyz@...' and > 'majordomo@...' and to which of them they have to send a(n) > (un)subscribe to. Which part of the handbook are you talking about? I have here: ----- snip ------------------------------------------------------ [ Appendix C. Resources on the Internet ] [ C.1. Mailing Lists ] C.1.2. How to Subscribe All mailing lists live on FreeBSD.org, so to post to a given list you simply mail to . It will then be redistributed to mailing list members world-wide. To subscribe to a list, send mail to and include subscribe [] in the body of your message. For example, to subscribe yourself to freebsd-announce, you'd do: % mail majordomo@FreeBSD.org subscribe freebsd-announce ^D If you want to subscribe yourself under a different name [ ... ] ----- snap ------------------------------------------------------ How can one misunderstand the instructions? It even has an example. Although new users might not be too familiar with mail(1) they could get the idea. But then again they could simply click on the mailto: URL with the majordomo address -- clicking cannot be this difficult, can it? There is even an explicite statement of what "posting to the list by sending mail to " does. And the very next paragraph (the second in the section) tells how to subscribe. Since you suggest to "change the passage to something less confusing" -- can you come up with something better? Just saying "somebody should ..." (write the doc, do the coding, test stuff, do advocacy, choose whatever you wish to get done) doesn't magically make things get done. Should you know how to phrase the above instructions better, feel free to submit the changes. Don't care too much about markup, -doc people will happily do this for you should the content improve this way. Just provide the words people will less likely be confused by ... > Or am I mislead and the mislead "(un)subscribe"-messages ain't being > more and more frequent? [ OT ] Well, one cannot solve human problems with technical means ... One of the mailing lists' principles is "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, and he'll hate you for a lifetime." I guess there is no cure for people who are unwilling or unable to read and follow simple instructions. Handholding doesn't work (for too long, it's rather short sighted) and is not the UNIX way. Most probably some of those people are better off with chosing a different OS for their purposes. Those who know how to read and simply err in a hurry surely are in the minority (and still err unnecessarily and for no acceptable reason). virtually yours 82D1 9B9C 01DC 4FB4 D7B4 61BE 3F49 4F77 72DE DA76 Gerhard Sittig true | mail -s "get gpg key" Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net -- If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above ask your parents or an adult to help you. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message