Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 21:22:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Ben Manes <anarchy@crl.com> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: Malartre <malartre@aei.ca>, FreeBSD-Newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: #freebsd-newbies Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980421210558.3309D-100000@crl.crl.com> In-Reply-To: <19980422123732.26573@welearn.com.au>
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> Their main concerns seem to be: > 1. Newbies might ask questions in channels where people don't want > to answer questions. This feeling is very strong! We would have > to make sure that didn't happen. If we can help to keep newbies > out of the other channels by being there, they would be pleased. > 2. Newbies will tell each other the wrong advice, and give FreeBSD > a bad name. Nobody is available to help newbies, and if a newbie > can't get an answer there is no other channel to send them to. Here's the real problem, who (with expreience) will sit around and answer all these questions. On Efnet, you can find channels such as #computers, but then that can deal with every aspect of the computer, from hardware, to operating systems, to mere software and drivers. There's a lot to talk about, and since there's always someone with a question, its rarely boring. But then, you have #Unix. It has a simple name (like #computers), which is the first place newbies, or those with any technical difficulty, will turn to. However, #Unix hates questions and your lucky if you catch the answer before your kicked, banned, and flooded out. At first, I bet #Unix was fine with the questions, but was never ment to be for technical advise and was a place for power-users to come and talk. There attitude is just from the flood of questions, which to them, are to simple for their time. As people have noted, freebsd-questions and -hackers wont answer simple questions, and I dare you to find any decent tech support from businesses that pay only minimum wage. People just can't take it all the time, especially on one topic, and even on #computers people leave for months on end, until their ready to help again. Perhaps, the worse part in this idea is the channel name. Those with questions wont immediatly think, "I'll go to #freebsd-newbies," but rather only find after they were booted from #freebsd and had enough patience (or fear) to list all freebsd channels. And, on the last note, how many new users do you truly expect to go from efnet (or dalnet, or undernet) to bsdnet? If you want to help new users on irc, you have to face all these problems. 1. Keep the channel name simple, so users will immediatly go there. 2. Keep the operators/helpers happy, motivated, and there. 3. Put the channel somewhere accessable. Those are the challenges, and as proven time, and time again, the only difficult one is #2. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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