From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Apr 24 18:02:26 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id SAA02821 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 24 Apr 1995 18:02:26 -0700 Received: from bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au (bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au [130.102.2.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id SAA02810 for ; Mon, 24 Apr 1995 18:02:19 -0700 Received: from wcs.uq.edu.au (actually juno.wcs.uq.edu.au) by bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au with SMTP (PP); Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:01:43 +1000 Received: by wcs.uq.edu.au (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA15300; Tue, 25 Apr 95 11:01:26 EST From: Gary Roberts Message-Id: <9504250101.AA15300@wcs.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: Gating hackers into the newsgroups To: jkh@freefall.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:01:25 +1000 (EST) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <811.798769365@freefall.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Apr 24, 95 05:22:45 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2406 Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jordan K. Hubbard writes: > > ... If every `lurker' agreed to > > `adopt a newbie' and hold his/her hand until he/she got running, that > > should immediately reduce newbie traffic in both news and mail by > > transferring the traffic from the public lists to private e-mail. However, > > If you manage to make this go, you have my personal nomination for the ... OK, having been stupid enough to put my hand up in the first place, here is what I see myself being able to do. 1. I agree to act as a `registration point' for willing `lurkers'. If you are willing to help, I would maintain your details on a centralised list. You would only get one newbie at a time unless you agreed to take more. You don't have to be a `lurker', just willing to `adopt a newbie'. (I've already put Terry down for 50. With his volume of output he should easily be able to handle that number :-> ;-> :->.) (Although with his 20% `confusion' factor [according to Julian was it??] maybe that isn't such a good idea -- it'd probably be 90% with newbies :->.) All jokes aside, I just wanted to make it clear that the helpers list would be very much open to all and not limited to one newbie at a time. 2. I would produce a suitable `announcement' of the service which would be posted say once a month (or whatever). 3. I would receive all requests from newbies and send them a standard acknowledgement, pointing out that their commitment would be to take on a newbie themselves at the end of their `hand-holding' period. If they agreed to the conditions, I would allocate them to a helper. 4. At the end of the hand-holding period (how long do people feel this should be??) the newbie name would be transferred automatically to the bottom of the helper list and they would be automatically given the next newbie. 5. Helpers can withdraw at any time *after* handling 1 newbie. This would be the basic minimum commitment of a helper/ex-newbie. 6. I would try to do this `by hand' unless some scripting expert could come up with some automated scheme to handle it. This is all just `off the top of my head' at the moment. Please feedback suggestions/comments as you see fit. Cheers, -- Gary Roberts (gary@wcs.uq.edu.au) (Ph +617 844 0400 Fax +617 844 0444) 4th Floor, South Bank House, 234 Grey St, South Bank QLD 4101 Australia.