Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 12:18:59 +0100 From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Usage guidelines for freebsd-questions Message-ID: <20000119121858.E24578@daemon.ninth-circle.org>
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[This is a list I compiled which hopefully will get freebsd-questions to a better signal to noise ratio, opinions herein are entirely mine, but I guess most people would do good to read it andthink about it for a sec. Comments are, as always, appreciated.] - Have you bothered to check the Handbook and FAQ or the archives to see if we didn't answer your question already? And if this never made the FAQ or Handbook, why haven't you mailed freebsd-doc@freebsd.org about this with what should be added? - Have you tried ``man <subject>'' or ``apropos <subject>'' and see if there is a manpage about what you seek? - Use proper netiquette, this means snipping/removing irrelevant parts of the mail you are replying to, not only will the text be more correlated, but it will also save annoyance and bandwidth. - Use dots, commas, capitals and parapgraphs in your mail, not only does it look better and more readable, people might actually read and reply to your mail. - Please use english only on this list, for people unsure about their english, feel free to try your best at english, I am sure we get to what you want to know sooner or later, or check http://www.freebsd.org/support.html#mailing-list to see if your favorite language has its own mailinglist. - People struggling with english will not be flamed for their trying to use english. You weren't that great at first too when you learned <insert language X here> for the first time. - Take flaming to private mail. - Politely explain majordomo to people who send their majordomo messages to the list and don't include the list on reply. - When reporting problems, have you considered that: - /var/log/messages exist for first help in troubleshooting? - uname -a a valuable tool is for people trying to help. - people are not psychic, hence dmesg, pnpinfo, pciconf, tcpdump or other diagnostic tools output are necessary. - including the actual error message might help people diagnose your problem? - specifying the version of the programs involved also helps troubleshooting? - the steps you used to come across the problem are necessary to reproduce the error. - mailing the list with your results will benefit other people struggling with the same problem and might help our documentation team to appropriately update the handbook and FAQ. - ``me too's'' are accepted when they get substantiated with your local information and results. - Try to trim cc: lists. - Do not crosspost unless you're sure. - FreeBSD doesn't evolve around you, it evolves around the community. - When asking comparisons between FreeBSD and OS X, Y or Z, please search the mailinglist archives at http://www.freebsd.org/search/search.html#mailinglists for them. Advocacy and Questions will yield too many hits for you to even consider asking this question again on the mailinglist(s). -- Jeroen Ruigrok vd W/Asmodai asmodai@[wxs.nl|bart.nl|freebsd.org] Documentation nutter/B-rated Coder BSD: Technical excellence at its best The BSD Programmer's Documentation Project <http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai>; Ain't gonna spend the rest of my Life, quietly fading away... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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