Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 19:56:24 +0200 From: Gerhard Sittig <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: subscribe freebsd-stable Message-ID: <20020716195624.X1494@shell.gsinet.sittig.org> In-Reply-To: <20020716053638.A21324@grybel.mayn.de>; from 520002375936-0001@t-online.de on Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 05:36:38AM %2B0200 References: <200207152133.g6FLXQb72508@osvald.void.ru> <20020716053638.A21324@grybel.mayn.de>
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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 ------------------------------------------------------
[ Appendix C. Resources on the Internet ]
[ C.1. Mailing Lists ]
C.1.2. How to Subscribe
All mailing lists live on FreeBSD.org, so to post to a given
list you simply mail to <listname@FreeBSD.org>. It will then be
redistributed to mailing list members world-wide.
To subscribe to a list, send mail to <majordomo@FreeBSD.org>
and include
subscribe <listname> [<optional address>]
in the body of your message. For example, to subscribe yourself
to freebsd-announce, you'd do:
% mail majordomo@FreeBSD.org
subscribe freebsd-announce
^D
If you want to subscribe yourself under a different name [ ... ]
----- 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?
[ 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 82D1 9B9C 01DC 4FB4 D7B4 61BE 3F49 4F77 72DE DA76
Gerhard Sittig true | mail -s "get gpg key" Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net
--
If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above
ask your parents or an adult to help you.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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