Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 13:44:33 -0500 (EST) From: Neil Ludban <n-ludban@onu.edu> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Subject: Re: Rant: What are we? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980328095733.18045B-100000@austin.onu.edu> In-Reply-To: <19980328183655.26375@freebie.lemis.com>
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On 28 Mar 1998, Greg Lehey wrote: > OK, maybe it's time for me to say a word. Sue has told you some of > the history that went into setting up this mailing list. Here's a > little more, coloured by my personal viewpoint. > > For a long time, we have had three "general" FreeBSD lists: > > 1. -hackers, for heavy technical discussion. > 2. -questions, for questions on how to use FreeBSD. > 3. -chat, for general discussion. Based on these definitions, the signal to noise ratio for the first two is horrible (sadly, -questions usually being the better, IMO). I haven't been following -chat as long, but it seems unlikely anyone would post anything that didn't belong. > Even with these three, we have had difficulties deciding which list to > use. -hackers and -questions are the largest lists (each a little > under 1000 people), and the subject matter overlaps. Where do you > send a detailed technical question, for example? > > What we've tried to do is to draw the line between -questions and > -hackers roughly along the distinction between system administration > and programming. But not everybody agrees with that distinction, not > everybody sticks to it. What can we do? I send out reminders every > time I answer that kind of message, I send out a "How to get best > results" once a week. Still people get confused, or they can't be > bothered, and some even think it's worth flaming me for. Anyone trying to install FreeBSD is a sysadmin. But there's a huge difference between the user at home trying to set up PPP or play Doom, a first-time ISP admin, or someone supporting 1000's of computers or 100k's of users; in background knowledge, previous experience, PC technical ability, for fun or as a job, etc... Same thing goes for programming. Just beginning C, writing something useful to run under Unix, porting or developing an application, device drivers, kernel extensions, emulating other systems, hacking internals, writing assembly for a specific architecture... > One of the reasons they get confused is that many of them are newbies. > Does that mean they should be relegated to a different mailing list? > I don't personally think so. This is your brain on Windoze 95 :-) > I don't think that newbies should use hackers to ask "I have a PPP > connection now, but why doesn't Netscrape work?", but even though this > sort of thing happens twice a week on -questions, I can't see much > advantage in having it happen twice a week on two different mailing > lists: many more people benefit from the answers on -questions than > just the person who asked the question. Perhaps the definition of technical varies too much by experience. > So why do we need a fourth list? Sue thinks that many *real* newbies > are a little intimidated by the activity on -questions, and that they > would benefit from a different kind of discussion. Some of the > answers that have gone by since the mailing list started are > indicative of this. On the other hand, it would be nice to think that > these real newcomers will quickly become more adept. This would make > -newbies more like a reception area than a mailing list. -questions has way too much traffic. Significant problems from people who have done their homework are getting the same quick "read the handbook" responses as persons who have obviously not bothered to do so. Four lists isn't nearly enough. Fewer lists means they get dominated by long time users. More lists to cover narrower topics may bother people who have to sign up to read each one, but I think it would be an improvement over not signing up because of the noise. The first new list should be -1st-install. Then split the existing technical lists into -devel and -user, and encourage the use of the -user lists for questions and general newbie chat. Developers should be the lurkers, getting feedback, answering very technical questions or making clarifications about new features. > Then there's the concept of "Auntie Sue's tea room". Maybe a bit of > the flavour of IRC (I'm guessing; I've never used IRC). That's more > like -chat, and maybe there's something going for it. The -chat > newsgroup is frequented by the same people as on -hackers, people who > have known each other for years and have a long-standing relationship > with UNIX. While there's no eligibility criterion for -chat, most > newbies would find it uninteresting. And that's one less list for newbies. We seem to be stuck in -questions. > I'm not convinced by any of these arguments, but I thought that the > idea was worthwhile enough that we should give it a try. Sue may have > got the feeling that this meant "stay in your place or we'll close the > list again", but that's not the way the FreeBSD project does things. > It would be nice, though, for people to have a good idea of what list > to use when, and having -newbies complicates that issue. If people > start asking questions on -newbies, for example, there's a good chance > that those who no longer think of themselves as newbies will ask > *their* questions on -hackers, and -questions would die out. -newbies as a name seems to have been a poor choice, but the idea is working. There needs to be a place for people who are still learning to get together and talk about their experiences, and to be able to criticize FreeBSD without someone stomping out a possible discussion with "that's the way it's always been, we have better things to do." Newbies are seeing FreeBSD for the first time, and have the enthusiasm to help make the first experience for the next new user even better. Talking with other people who would be interested in such projects helps get them going. > That in itself isn't such a bad idea. What we would then have would > be a new -questions called -newbies. The name would make a better > distinction from -hackers. On the other hand, the hackers are already > complaining about too much volume, so the next step might be a > dilution of -hackers. > > As you can see, it's not an easy distinction. Sue had hoped that the > heavies would keep off -newbies, or at least not post any messages, > but that hasn't quite happened. From what I've seen, there are a > number of people active on the list who are quite experienced. This > may not be a bad idea: I was the person who was concerned that > questions on -newbies would give rise to a lot of misleading or just > downright wrong answers. But whichever way we look at it, there's a > differentiation problem. > > Any comments? I personally think we need to let the group develop a > bit, and then we'll be able to decide. > > Greg > IMHO, questions are for -questions, newbie experiences for -newbies. Everyone was a newbie at one time, or still is in some areas. I would certainly enjoy hearing what it was like "in the old days." ;-) And someone who has written the best FreeBSD book for newbies should certainly be allowed to inititiate discussions. My own newbie status is subject to debate. I tried running FreeBSD two years ago, but got discouraged during the summer. Next fall I got it going again, but also ran DOS and NT on a daily basis. Went through several complete reinstalls (never completely intentionally) last school year, gradually giving more time and disk space to FreeBSD. Now FreeBSD runs for weeks at a time, being shut down only for quarter break or power outages. I'm an undergraduate computer science major. Sounds like an advantage, but this is a very M$-centric environment. Trying to learn Unix in isolation on archaic hardware was a real challenge. I have lots of questions that are too technical for -questions and too general for -hackers. Eventually, after a lot of reading and trial and error, I get most of it figured out. Now to find a newbie-programmers list... --Neil To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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