Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 21:14:58 -0700 From: "Michael P. Sale" <mike@merchantsnet.com> To: "Sue Blake" <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Lists, newbies & support (was: Re: Where to get Windows Internet stuff/ More on Windows & BSD) Message-ID: <01bd9a6f$a829c900$4806bccc@708644668>
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>If you don't like how freebsd-questions works, there's a lot of people >who would like to hear about your problems with the list so that they can >address them. Care to share? Sure. It is my opinion that questions is simply not very newbie friendly and that newbies are intimidated by the thought of sending a mail percieved as stupid email in. Then, sometimes when answers do come back, they are often "newbie ambiguos" at best. Often, email that is returned to a newbie says something like "check to make sure your s01 interface is configured correctly". Eh? How does one even do that I wonder? Then the question comes...eeerr how do I do that? This of course is after the newbie has waited a day for the answer and then spends countless hours searching up references to s01 because he does not want to look like the perceived leech that we discussed earlier. When posting to a newsgroup such as questions, anyone with any sense wants to have looked everywhere and done everything possible before going to the list. ( I think most of us appreciate the time many question answerers spend there) The problem with that again is that the information is VERY HARD to dig out and track down. It's not like linux with lots of books and references that are handy and can be gone through before posting. For someone that does not have hours (literally) to do such searching, this process becomes not a process of fun and adventure, but pain and agony. Not all newbies are going to stick through that pain and agony simply because they read about what a powerfull secure OS FreeBSD is. A newbies question list would give newbies the freedom to ask those easy questions that will get them pointed in the right direction and not feel silly. I think that there would be abusers, but as with any other list, abusers usually get pruned fairly quickly. Plus, unlike the questions list, I imagine most newbies would read every email and thus learn more about the OS. I get over 500 emails a day from various lists (not counting newsgroups) and I certainly don't have time to monitor the questions list as I would like. A newbies list would be much more appropriate for such things. >They would end up answering the same questions in two lists, effectively >doubling the workload and halving their tolerance of repeated >questions. People help because it's fun. It's not fun to take care over >an answer and find that the same question is still asked, as if it wasn't >worth your trouble answering in the first place. I seriously doubt their workload would double. At worst, we would see some cross posting. I can't imagine that many of the same questions don't recycle about every 20-30 days anyway. I believe that the folks that take the time to answer questions may think that this is a possibility, but I don't think it's reality. >I think that's the biggest problem. Lists can be defined in terms of >topic content, type of people, or activities. (Here the topic is the >activities of newbies) To use subject content it is necessary for all >participants to be able to tell what is and what is not part of that >topic. Things like "children's football in Sydney" work; things like >"social responsibility for politicians and journalists" don't. It's >fairly common for FreeBSD newbies to encounter a problem which they >believe is a simple one caused by their own stupidity but is in fact >quite complex or unusual, and find that only one of the hundreds of >experienced people in -questions knows the answer. Such a question in a newbies group would either go unanswered and thus the user may clue into upping the ante or end up forwarded to questions. I didn't say it would be perfect, just better. >But I don't think they'd stop. I think many would learn to be more >dependent, take on a service user's mentality, and have trouble moving >out of that role later on. You think that people would become dependent on bad advice? Well, I guess we'll just have to disagree about that. >Don't you want more good documentation for newbies, progress towards >making FreeBSD more newbie-friendly, greater awareness of the needs and >abilities of newbies in general? I'd rather see any deficiencies removed >(or at least worked on with input from newbies) rather than accepted as >OK because there's a scheme targeted at fixing problems after they happen. No, I don't.... Of course I do, but you can wish in one hand a spit in the other. See what comes first. I think we could compare FreeBSD support wise to Linux of three years ago. Do I want to wait for the documentation of FreeBSD to catch up to current Linux standards before I use it? Lets look at some interim solutions to a problem that is a way off from being fixed. Everyday that FreeBSD goes without more documentation, an easy interface and low level support is another day that a new user chooses another unix variant over FreeBSD. I think that one of those issues is very addressable right now. The others will come in time as things that take time do. > >We all have limited resources and I'm looking at using them effectively. >Until recently, newbies were not a resource and that's a terrible waste. Absolutely. And the more newbies that FreeBSD can catch and keep, the more newbies will be able to add to the process. I just want to see those newbies stay. Mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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