From owner-freebsd-newbies Mon Oct 16 22:47: 2 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from gray.westgate.gr (gray.westgate.gr [212.205.119.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29BDF37B4C5; Mon, 16 Oct 2000 22:46:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from charon@localhost) by gray.westgate.gr (8.11.1/8.11.1) id e9H5jKC03185; Tue, 17 Oct 2000 08:45:20 +0300 (EEST) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 08:45:20 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas To: Greg Lehey Cc: Rick Hamell , David Johnson , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: -newbies Message-ID: <20001017084519.B2973@gray.westgate.gr> References: <39E6E839.3A0EC2B6@acuson.com> <20001014132608.A5353@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20001014132608.A5353@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com>; from grog@lemis.com on Sat, Oct 14, 2000 at 01:26:08PM +1100 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 3A 75 52 EB F1 58 56 0D - C5 B8 21 B6 1B 5E 4A C2 X-URL: http://students.ceid.upatras.gr/~keramida/index.html Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org : Oops! This is being cross-posted. Do we really need to post this in : both of them lists? On Sat, Oct 14, 2000 at 01:26:08PM +1100, Greg Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 12 October 2000 at 8:34:20 +0000, Rick Hamell wrote: > > > > FreeBSD-newbies needs to be removed. I've been on it since it was > > created and can say that it is not living up to it's orginal purpose. If I > > remeber right, and a quick check of the archives seems to confirm, > > -newbies was created only if no questions were asked there. In the last > > year or two it has been a low-traffic list. Most every post across it has > > either been a cross-post, OR a question! Despite my and several other's > > efforts to keep it on topic, and questions posted where they belong, it is > > somehow attracting questions. Many of which are not even close to being > > newbie questions! > > Indeed. I've been watching this with some concern. A bit of > background: newbies arose from some discussions Sue Blake and I had > about traffic on -questions. She voiced the opinion that the topics > were too intimidating for real newbies, and that we needed a different > list. I disagreed, but in the end suggested we try it for a while. > In addition, I promised not to answer any questions on -newbies. For > a while, every time somebody asked a technical question on the list, > Sue would get up and redirect them to -questions, but she hasn't been > doing that lately. I started working with FreeBSD and reading the lists around August 1999, which means I am a newbie in many ways, the same way I am not a newbie in other ways. After hanging around for a while without posting anything, I saw a lot of posting that were in short "you should not post questions here, because -questions is made for exactly this kind of thing". I have also seen people answer questions. In an effort to get the best of both worlds, I tried to come up with a combination of the two, and I ended up posting replies to questions posted in here that include some references that will get the newbie in question started, plus a nice and kind warning that they should post questions to that `other' list from now on. I am probably acting in violation of the list charters, but I can still understand why someone would post a newbie-question to a list called -newbies. I am still unsure if I (or anyone else on -newbies, for that matter) should send newbies asking technical questions away, without at least a reference to get them on their way. I do agree, however, with those who have pointed out that having a single list where "technical questions are asked" is a good thing. But then again, the mailing list search interface in freebsd.org can search in more than one list at once. Ah well. I probably sound kind of confused already. -- Giorgos Keramidas, For my public pgp2 key: finger -l keramida@diogenis.ceid.upatras.gr To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message