From owner-freebsd-stable  Thu Oct 14  6:51: 2 1999
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From: Tim Priebe <tim@iafrica.com.na>
Reply-To: tim@iafrica.com.na
To: "Paul M . Lambert" <plambert@plambert.net>, stable@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Roasting Newbies
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 15:23:46 +0200
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On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Paul M . Lambert wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
> 
> > Brad Knowles wrote:
> > > 
> > >         IMO, an attempted post by any non-subscribed user to any freebsd
> > > mailing list other than -questions should get this kind of an
> > > automated response.

I could be mistaken, but requiring someone to subscribe to a list in order to
post to it is over kill, and will not _prevent_ questions from being asked in
the wrong forum.

[...]

> Perhaps there is a better idea.
> 
> There are a number of people on the lists who are technically competent
> and have a reasonable understanding of the way FreeBSD works.  They can
> easily answer most of the newbies' questions and point them (gently
> at first, and later with the Thunderous LART of Righteousness) to the
> correct places to get their answers.  Many of these people are currently
> doing this.

[...]

> Why?  So that the people who don't care to read questions that have
> been asked and answered before can ignore that entire thread.  Heck,
> with some creativity, most of the "gurus" could delete threads that
> have been handled.  So they wouldn't have to deal with them.
> 
> The "gurus" that don't have threaded email readers could still fake
> it...  It'd be easy enough to make procmail and perl go back and add
> the header and/or subject-tag to the original message if a reply comes
> through with the header and/or subject-tag.
> 
> Now, this is just an idea I'm having late at night.  There are millions
> of reasons why it can't work.  I just can't come up with them at the moment.
> 
> I'm sure someone will tell me.  ;-)

One good reason for _this_ list, is that it is listed as "required", if you want
to track stable. It is not required that you be a "guru" to do that. I do not
want to have to wade through the off topic questions and replies on a required
list. A possible solution could be to have a list of unmoderated contributers,
and to have messages from anyone else sent to a system, that a group of
moderators could check, and pass or have a standard response sent pointing them
in the right direction to get help.

Tim.


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