Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 20:59:40 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Livia Admin <kreaper@livia.netfoo.org>, David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>, ML Duke <mlduke@concentric.net>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: questions [was: anyone tried this?] Message-ID: <20001017205938.O2537@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20001014155036.A275@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com>; from Greg Lehey on Sat, Oct 14, 2000 at 03:50:36PM %2B1100 References: <20001013112858.A3299@livia.netfoo.org> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10010130956040.347-100000@mlduke.concentric.net> <20001013112858.A3299@livia.netfoo.org> <39E6EEF0.CAB9D949@acuson.com> <20001013112858.A3299@livia.netfoo.org> <20001014155036.A275@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com>
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On Sat, Oct 14, 2000 at 03:50:36PM +1100, Greg Lehey wrote:
>
> As David mentions, we have a problem with -newbies. This question
> belonged on -questions, but it's not always clear that that's the
> right place. When newbies was created, Sue promised that people
> wouldn't ask technical questions on -newbies, and I promised not to
> answer them if they were asked. But if I hadn't, you might not have
> had the right answer.
The simple solution is if you see a question wrongly posted to
freebsd-newbies, rub out the -newbies and replace it with -questions
before replying, maintaining the cc to the original poster of course.
People used to do that and it worked well. Your three points and my
extra fourth point below take effect then.
> There are three very good reasons to ask questions only on -questions:
>
> 1. More people will see the question, and the chance of getting an
> answer is better.
>
> 2. More people will see the answers, so it's more worthwhile to send
> a good answer.
>
> 3. The chance of getting a *correct* answer is better.
4. People know that a search of the -questions archive will show
whether their potential question has ever been answered before,
so you save future newbies the embarrassment of asking again.
I don't think the occasional question accidentally posted to -newbies
is the major cause of problems, I think it's the _replies_ to -newbies
that do. That's what leaves them barely answered or escalates them into
support threads, and what encourages others to follow a bad example. If
you really know enough to answer, then you really know enough to do it
in the right place.
Remember there's hardly anything a newbie wants more than to be able to
help another newbie. Few realise that they can help out in -questions
too if they do know the answer, and it can be as easy as changing the
header to read -questions instead of -newbies before sending the reply.
I used to do that myself, prefacing the reply with something like:
[redirected to the support group freebsd-questions]
and starting again underneath the question with:
I'm a newbie too, but I think you'll need to blah blah blah...
Responses to that humble approach ranged from gentle correction to
cover my omissions, to confirmation and sometimes praise when my answer
was particularly good. By default I and the original asker got copies
of replies, and they went into the -questions archives to save and
enlighten future generations. Multiple people benefited. (Warning:
consistent wrong answers or guesses will make you look bad, so don't
try cheating!)
> Somebody else suggested we should change the name of newbies, to
> something like "newbies-chat". That's a bit of a mouthful, but it
> describes things better.
That was suggested before the list was created, and I preferred that
name, but it was considered that having two hyphens in the name
(freebsd-newbies-chat) would upset the pattern, so naming consistency
triumphed over communication and we took a very big risk. It doesn't
help for me to say "told ya so" now, so I won't :-)
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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