From owner-freebsd-stable Thu Oct 14 11:14:11 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from dt050n71.san.rr.com (dt050n71.san.rr.com [204.210.31.113]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68E6614F88 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:14:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Received: from gateway.gorean.org (gateway.gorean.org [10.0.0.1]) by dt050n71.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA09241; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:13:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 11:13:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug X-Sender: doug@dt050n71.san.rr.com To: Brad Knowles Cc: Jamie Norwood , "Daniel C. Sobral" , "Paul M. Lambert" , stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Roasting Newbies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Brad Knowles wrote: > At 10:08 AM -0700 1999/10/14, Doug wrote: > > > It is cabable of that, but managing this on the scale we're > > talking about with the FreeBSD lists is just not an easy task. This idea > > has been proposed often, and always rejected by the very people you claim > > to want to help. > > I can't speak for whether or not it is practical in the context > of the FreeBSD lists (I'm not the postmaster, after all), but I can > speak within my experience. [0] Let me rephrase. It won't work. Even if it would work, it won't happen because the developers don't want it. End of story. > > As much as I applaud any efforts to increase the level of user > > education, I have to say that I think an automated response just will not > > do. > > IMO, if it's not an automated response, the rules won't be > implemented with any regularity, and the inappropriate questioners > will not learn. > > You've got to set things up so that it is impossible for humans > to screw up this task That's not possible. Since it isn't possible, you have to start looking at next best alternatives. > because they're not real good at following > precise recipes for exactly how to act, and reliably applying those > rules each and every time. However, computers *are* real good at > precisely these sorts of things. Actually you've proven my point here. It's precisely because human behavior is so unpredictable that "automated teaching solution" is an oxymoron. I'll stop here because experience tells me that no further input from me on this topic will improve the situation, however if you want to look at realistic solutions to the problems at hand I think -doc is probably the best list to continue this discussion on. Good luck, Doug -- "Stop it, I'm gettin' misty." - Mel Gibson as Porter, "Payback" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message