Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 13:59:38 +0000 From: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> To: Licia <licia@o-o.org> Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, Donald Wilde <dwilde1@thuntek.net>, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Is there a "how did you hear about us?" form on www.freebsd.org? Message-ID: <36FB92CA.187A0C3@uk.radan.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9903251839020.20136-100000@o-o.org>
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Licia wrote: > > On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > > > The install process registration has made me wonder too. Would it be possibl > > e > > > perhaps to offer a "print this out and mail it in" registration for people > > > > The registration process everyone is currently seeing now really need > > to be ripped out and replaced. Why? Several reasons. > > > > One, as you've noted, there's no way to do the registration when you > > haven't got email set up yet; a good percentage of the registrations > > we get are actually bounced back by freebsd.org's spam filter, which > > doesn't deal with sites without proper DNS. When you've set the > > machine up before the DNS entry, as many do, that's clearly not going > > to work. > > > > Secondly there's the fact that email, even though clearly imperfect, > > is the only way to go. We don't deal well with web site registration > > (at least not in a way which weeds/prevents duplicates or allows > > someone to change their existing entries) and we don't allow people to > > postal mail their stuff in to some counter person. > > > > The idea of having people register at installation time is a good one, > > don't get me wrong, but my initial "proof of concept implementation" > > there is clearly showing many cracks now. Who'd like to take over > > registration at this stage? > > > > - Jordan > > > > Would you be interested in the possibility of a standalone TCP registration > server? A simple protocol could be used to create/edit/delete registrations. > With a simple whois style 'handle' system and basic authentication it would be > possible to allowe users to maintain their own entries in the system, with > virtually no added effort from staff or such. I'd personally also like to see > the possibility of users snail mailing in their registrations, if they simply > have no way of getting online to do it as well. > If you decide to run with this idea then may I make a couple of suggestions? 1) When designing the registration form (whether it's a printed form to go with the CDs or an ASCII file for printing out) then please don't forget that FreeBSD has an international user base and non-US addresses often don't fit well into a US-style address template. 2) To encourage more people to complete and send in the form why not try and get volunteers to handle the forms in their country? This would spread the workload and should hopefully more people would send the forms in because they wouldn't have the inconvenience of having to go to the post office to find the cost of mailing to the US. The volunteer could then enter the details from the forms onto the registration database on behalf of the non-connected users. Before you ask, yes I am volunteering to do this for the UK (and Western Europe if necessary) OK it's not a great contribution to the project, but every little bit helps, or so they say. > If you're interested I can probably get a basic demonstration server written > over the weekend and at least one demonstration client, I imagine. I'd like > to also write a command line tool that would allow users to edit their > registrations (allowing for multiple cpu's installed per person, with as much > information as they care to give for possible demographics use) with the ease > of something like chpass. > > I could also probably provide clients that would work from within sysinstall, > and some simple way for snailmail to be handled as well though that would > take longer than a single weekend :). > > [ licia@o-o.org ] [ http://www.o-o.org/~licia/ ] [ Alias : Ladywolf] > [ Telnet to o-o.org and log in as bbs ] [ ssh -l bbs -C o-o.org ] > [ A happy user of FreeBSD : http://www.freebsd.org/ ] > > main(){int num[4]={1768122732,762265697,1919889007,103};printf("%s\n",num);} > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message -- FreeBSD - The Power To Serve http://www.freebsd.org My Webpage http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~markov _______________________________________________________________ Mark Ovens, CNC Apps Engineer, Radan Computational Ltd. Bath UK CAD/CAM solutions for Sheetmetal Working Industry mailto:marko@uk.radan.com http://www.radan.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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