Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 09:59:50 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: "Michael P. Sale" <mike@merchantsnet.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Lists, newbies & support (was: Re: Where to get Windows Internet stuff/ More on Windows & BSD) Message-ID: <19980618095950.51306@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <01bd9a26$571e9a20$3c06bccc@708644668>; from Michael P. Sale on Wed, Jun 17, 1998 at 12:30:09PM -0700 References: <01bd9a26$571e9a20$3c06bccc@708644668>
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On Wed, Jun 17, 1998 at 12:30:09PM -0700, Michael P. Sale wrote:
> >Why would they want to watch two lists when they believe they are doing
> >an adequate job in the one that exists.
>
> The problem I believe lies in the fact that they *believe* that questions is
> enough. I personally do not believe that it is.
If you don't like how freebsd-questions works, there's a lot of people
who would like to hear about your problems with the list so that they can
address them. Care to share?
> >They won't be paid overtime.
>
> As I said, the questions are allready being answered somewhere. Or is it
> just that everyone believes that if there was a newbies-questions list that
> newbies would actually start asking "newbie" questions. There is only
> overtime if you believe the latter. If you believe the latter, then there
> is a deficency.
They would end up answering the same questions in two lists, effectively
doubling the workload and halving their tolerance of repeated
questions. People help because it's fun. It's not fun to take care over
an answer and find that the same question is still asked, as if it wasn't
worth your trouble answering in the first place.
> >And for that matter, why should we have to look in two places for answers.
>
> I have a hard time believing you even wrote that. When I look for
> information pertaining to this OS, I look in so many different places it's
> not even funny. It is usually a fairly long search as well. I believe that
> such a group would actually cut down on the search time for such answers.
>
> >There is no clear distinction between newbies level questions and more
> >difficult questions, so we'd be looking all over.
>
> I completely disagree. If that were true, one would only need to write one
> book per OS and be done with it. "How do I mount a drive" and "my server
> just blew up after doing an upgrade" are pretty different questions
> requireing different levels of expertise. I will agree that you may be
> right in the fact that newbie users may have a tough time differentiating
> between the two.
I think that's the biggest problem. Lists can be defined in terms of
topic content, type of people, or activities. (Here the topic is the
activities of newbies) To use subject content it is necessary for all
participants to be able to tell what is and what is not part of that
topic. Things like "children's football in Sydney" work; things like
"social responsibility for politicians and journalists" don't. It's
fairly common for FreeBSD newbies to encounter a problem which they
believe is a simple one caused by their own stupidity but is in fact
quite complex or unusual, and find that only one of the hundreds of
experienced people in -questions knows the answer.
> >They wouldn't get a chance. The place would be full of ex-newbies
> >answering easy questions with bad answers and intimidating the newbies
> >who'd otherwise have a go :-)
>
> Again, then people would stop asking questions on such a list. I'm not sure
> how much more you want me to prove a point.
But I don't think they'd stop. I think many would learn to be more
dependent, take on a service user's mentality, and have trouble moving
out of that role later on.
> >And some people in -questions and elsewhere would go back to spreading
> >the belief that every newbie is a braindead sloth who wants personal
> >hand-holding and just makes more work for everyone else by spreading
> >misinformation, a liability who doesn't deserve any consideration because
> >they'll never be bothered to help themselves. Go right ahead, prove it :-)
>
> This is a problem with ANYTHING technical and is not a FreeBSD only issue.
> Some newbies are such creatures while others are not. The truth is that
> FreeBSD is eons behind other OS's in being a good tool for newbies. More
> specifically unix newbies. As long as the documentation is sparse and the
> support is not aimed towards such a group, it will stay that way. Since I
> don't see too many books on FreeBSD out there I think that the deficency
> needs to be made up for with a newbies-questions group.
Don't you want more good documentation for newbies, progress towards
making FreeBSD more newbie-friendly, greater awareness of the needs and
abilities of newbies in general? I'd rather see any deficiencies removed
(or at least worked on with input from newbies) rather than accepted as
OK because there's a scheme targeted at fixing problems after they happen.
We all have limited resources and I'm looking at using them effectively.
Until recently, newbies were not a resource and that's a terrible waste.
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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