Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 00:53:43 +0100 From: Nik Clayton <nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk> To: David Marsh <drmarsh@bigfoot.com>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Newbies FAK Message-ID: <19980724005343.42939@nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.980723234704.drmarsh@bigfoot.com>; from David Marsh on Thu, Jul 23, 1998 at 11:00:08PM %2B0100 References: <199807180230.MAA15868@phoenix.welearn.com.au> <XFMail.980723234704.drmarsh@bigfoot.com>
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On Thu, Jul 23, 1998 at 11:00:08PM +0100, David Marsh wrote:
> I'm not sure why the decision has been made to direct *all* questions
> to FreeBSD-questions.
In a nutshell;
1. It means that people that want to ask questions only have one list
to post to, they don't need to cross-post to both lists.
2. People that want to answer questions only have to read one list.
3. The nature of the audience on -questions hopefully ensures that the
information you receive is more accurate. One of my reasons for
being on this list is to correct mis-information if it's posted.
Typically, I do this by mailing the person that posted the
mis-information, explaining why it's wrong, and then let them
followup back to the list with the right information.
> Where is there a good tutorial on the more arcane features of 'vi'
> (and one that's more readable and has more examples than `man vi')?
IMHO, that's borderline. Doubtless other people will disagree.
Something like
"So, what did you guys use when you were learning 'vi'?"
is more on the mark.
> Does anybody know where I can get StarOffice documentation?
> www.stardivision.com doesn't seem to have any.
Nothing to do with being new to FreeBSD, so off topic for this list. Again,
IMHO.
> FreeBSD-questions is a very busy list, and so far, I'm duly subscribed
> to it, but it is very timeconsuming to wade through. From my previous
> internet experience, I know that it's generally considered rude to fire
> questions at a list you don't subscribe to.
>
> So I'm wondering if -questions really is different in this case?
> Do people not mind emailing answers directly to NON-subscribing
> questioners? On most other lists that would be considered rude.
-questions is a bit different in this case. Apart from anything else,
I believe most of the question answerers include a cc: back to the
original questioner when they reply. It's just the done thing.
> (It would make things a little easier for me not to have to read/junk
> every topic on the -questions list, but there's the old chestnut that
> the question might just have been answered previously.
I throw away perhaps 70% of -questions unread, based on the subject lines.
I skim the remaining 30%, looking for stuff that I might need to know
one day, or answering those questions that I can.
I'm subscribed to almost all the FreeBSD mailing lists. Takes me about
an hour and a half each day, most of which is spent deleting messages.
> (How many times was "Hey? I get this lib.des.blah error in 2.2.6..?"
> asked recently.. :-( ))
Dunno. But that's what the list archives are for.
<snip>
> But please let me know if this has been gone over before or if I'm
> treading on somebody's toes..
It's been gone over before, I believe the current way it works is the best
of the possible options.
In particular, point 1 of my list above (people not knowing which list
to post their question to, and so cross-posting it to both) could quite
rapidly destroy this list. Again, IMHO.
<snip>
> > quickly. It includes books, on line documents and tutorials, and
> >links
> > to web pages that other newbies have found useful for learning. If
> >you
> > have a suggestion for good material to be included, please write to
> > freebsd-newbies and tell us about it.
>
> Right, this sounds good, but it really is the first I've heard of it.
-newbies hasn't been going too long, since the end of March by my
reckoning.
> > One thing we're going to see a fair bit is people posting
> >questions,
> > believing they're doing the right thing by posting here as newbies,
> > not realising how it works. If someone answers those questions the
>
> I think that having a single monolithic -questions group isn't the best
> way to deal with things, as it becomes too much for people to keep up
> with, not least the long-term answerers themselves, I'm sure.
Possibly not. There are subsets of -questions for some topics. For
example, the -scsi and -multimedia lists. If you were to post a
question to -questions along the line of "Which video card should I get
to do OpenGL" (or something like that) you'd probably be redirected to
the -multimedia mailing list.
There's probably room for some more mailing lists along these lines,
possible a -ppp or -network for networking related problems, and so on.
If you want to start a discussion about this in -questions, feel free.
<snip>
> There doesn't seem to be much discussion going on, unfortunately.
My local copy of this list shows 2,441 messages since I subscribed,
which is roughly 20 a day. There was quite a vocal discussion about
various topics recently.
N
--
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