Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 00:26:32 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: John Baldwin <jobaldwi@vt.edu> Cc: Rob <drifter@stratos.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cross Posting... Message-ID: <13656.924679592@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 20 Apr 1999 23:03:57 EDT." <XFMail.990420230357.jobaldwi@vt.edu>
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This is what I send to people who cross-post. I intend to keep sending it out, too. :-) If you're receiving this message, it's because you recently cross-posted something to more than one of the FreeBSD mailing lists, either directly or as a result of not trimming the cc on a follow-up, in a way that constitutes a direct violation of the posted mailing list charters. If you will be so good as to visit: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/eresources:charters.html You will see that posting to more than 2 lists, and frequently not even that many, is not allowed. A posting to even just two mailing lists is only rarely necessary and almost certainly never appropriate for simple questions, which should *always* go to the freebsd-questions mailing list. Why is this rule necessary? Several reasons: 1. Many of the other mailing lists, most specifically freebsd-hackers, were originally created purely for discussion of technical issues and do not constitute forums for providing tech support. Most cross-postings to -hackers and the other technical mailing lists are made in error by people thinking that they'll stand a better chance of getting an answer that way. This may in fact be occasionally true, but the flood of questions is also DESTROYING the effectiveness of these mailing lists for their original purpose (general discussion) and, in the long run, will only force the deletion of those mailing lists as ineffective communications media, driving all technical discussion "underground" to avoid this problem. This would be a sad loss for everyone and, in order to keep this from happening, the noise level in groups like -hackers MUST be significantly reduced, something which can only happen with user cooperation. 2. Most people, especially developers, subscribe to most (if not all) of the mailing lists and cross-posting only results in multiple copies being sent to each person. On some days, as many as 20 or 30 messages are duplicates and that only makes it even harder to keep up with the FreeBSD email load (which is often >500 messages a day) for those people, one of the worst (and most typical) offenses being to post to both -current and -hackers, resulting in many thousands of duplications. Remember: The more time these people have to spend reading email, the less time they have for development work and that impacts all of us. Thanking you in advance for your cooperation, - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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