Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 11:23:50 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: David Anderson <DRCAnderson@xtra.co.nz> Cc: Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Why don't you answer my questions? (was: Open Letter to List) Message-ID: <19990426112350.U9887@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <001f01be9000$de84d6c0$a925fea9@dynasite98>; from David Anderson on Mon, Apr 26, 1999 at 09:21:02AM -0700 References: <001f01be9000$de84d6c0$a925fea9@dynasite98>
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[Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] On Monday, 26 April 1999 at 9:21:02 -0700, David Anderson wrote: > Hi list > > Could I be so bold as to ask what criteria is used to determine > which questions (posted to the list) are answered first (or at all)? Sure, go ahead. Basically, it's described in my weekly posting "How to get best results from FreeBSD-questions": When submitting a question to FreeBSD-questions, consider the following points: 1. Remember that nobody gets paid for answering a FreeBSD question. They do it of their own free will. You can influence this free will positively by submitting a well-formulated question supplying as much relevant information as possible. You can influence this free will negatively by submitting an incomplete, illegible, or rude question. It's perfectly possible to send a message to FreeBSD-questions and not get an answer even if you follow these rules. It's much more possible to not get an answer if you don't. In the rest of this document, we'll look at how to get the most out of your question to FreeBSD-questions. 2. Not everybody who answers FreeBSD questions reads every message: they look at the subject line and decide whether it interests them. Clearly, it's in your interest to specify a subject. ``FreeBSD problem'' or ``Help'' aren't enough. If you provide no subject at all, many people won't bother reading it. If your subject isn't specific enough, the people who can answer it may not read it. 3. Format your message so that it is legible, and PLEASE DON'T SHOUT!!!!!. We appreciate that a lot of people don't speak English as their first language, and we try to make allowances for that, but it's really painful to try to read a message written full of typos or without any line breaks. Don't underestimate the effect that a poorly formatted mail message has, not just on the FreeBSD-questions mailing list. Your mail message is all people see of you, and if it's poorly formatted, one line per paragraph, badly spelt, or full of errors, it will give people a poor impression of you. A lot of badly formatted messages come from bad mailers or badly configured mailers. The following mailers are known to send out badly formatted messages without you finding out about them: cc:Mail Eudora exmh Microsoft Exchange Microsoft Internet Mail Microsoft Outlook Netscape As you can see, the mailers in the Microsoft world are frequent offenders. If at all possible, use a UNIX mailer. If you must use a mailer under Microsoft environments, make sure it is set up correctly. Try not to use MIME: a lot of people use mailers which don't get on very well with MIME. The complete text is available at http://www.lemis.com/questions.html. > I had noticed that some folks manage to get 2 and 3 postings > answered consequtively while my newbie posting appears to be avoided > =) > > What do I draw from this? That my question is too basic and others > are given priority because they are more interesting to the > respondents? I'm puzzled...... Basically, your messages are unreadable. I've gone to some trouble to reformat this one (thus the message at the top), and I've written numerous web pages on the subject. Your message was written in: Content-Type: multipart/alternative; This means that the complete text is sent twice, once in HTML (a completely inappropriate format for mail messages), and once in a mutilated text/plain (a correct format, but all your paragraphs are a single line: > I would appreciate any observations on this situation. I have participated in other mail lists and havent come across this situation before. I am committed to learning UNIX and plan to stick with FreeBSD - I hope I can help others in time. Normally I just delete messages like this, since it's too much trouble to reformat them. Answering this message took me 10 minutes, but I'm answering it because I just happen to have got to the end of today's mail, and because you ask specifically. Basically, I don't believe that you can get good results from Microsoft Outlook: at least nobody has ever shown me that they can do it. I don't know if this is the only reason your messages don't get answered: I can't recall reading any from you. And as the web page says, "It's perfectly possible to send a message to FreeBSD-questions and not get an answer even if you follow these rules". Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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