Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 11:14:24 -0500 From: "Kevin Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." <kdk@daleco.biz> To: "Gerhard Sittig" <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net>, <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: subscribe freebsd-stable [OT] Message-ID: <04f401c22dad$0660e240$2cec910c@fbccarthage.com> References: <200207152133.g6FLXQb72508@osvald.void.ru> <20020716053638.A21324@grybel.mayn.de> <20020716195624.X1494@shell.gsinet.sittig.org>
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerhard Sittig" <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net>
To: <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: subscribe freebsd-stable
> 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 ------------------------------------------------------
>
Here Gerhard quotes the Handbook.....
> ----- 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 <listname@FreeBSD.org>" 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?
Not IMHO.
>
> [ 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, Gerhard Sittig
> If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above
> ask your parents or an adult to help you.
LOL!!
2 things in society that cause this, I guess I'm disagreeing with your last
sentence, but the fundamental axiom "it ain't broke enough for the rest
of us to fix" remains the same.:
1. People *are* in too much of a hurry to read directions. (At
least in the
USA.) That's 30-40% of the traffic on this server
anyway, esp.
questions@ --- so often the answer is in the handbook.
(my est.,
I haven't done 'traffic analysis')
2. The promulgation of many majordomo-TYPE programs that use
different syntax that majordomo does. FBSD in general
does
some things differently than some people are used to.
Witness
the number of people who assume corporate structure (a
recent
example was a posting to -questions about a copy of a
magazine
for the archives). Or, witness the occasional poster
who assumes
that he it talking to TECH SUPPORT --- "Dear Sir, ...."
or that
we're offering degrees/certification --- "How can I be
certified
in FBSD?" <I've been looking for a good punchline for
that
one for a while now---maybe "build -CURRENT on a 486Dx33
and copy the screen output in longhand"....> Just
because you
can send the word "subscribe" to a listserv (or
whatever) server
and be successful doesn't mean we should not use
majordomo, but
the fact that there are many other mailing list managers
suggests that
from time to time we'll get emails that say nothing but
'subscribe'.
And, you can tell how much perseverance a user has by
how
many permutations of the command he sends to the wrong
address before he either gives up or does it correctly.
I say, let 'em send the mail. At least I KNOW there's nothing interesting
in the messages with that header---I look forward to hitting 'delete' w/o
parsing them. As for the [l]users, when they don't start receiving listmail
maybe they'll break rule #1 above, and learn how to do #2 ... education is
a Good Thing(TM*).
KDK
*Whose trademark, I dunno.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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