Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:53:18 -0800 From: Joaquin Menchaca <linuxuser@finnovative.net> To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: FreeBSD-newbies@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Time to shut down this list? Message-ID: <41D0682E.2070302@finnovative.net> In-Reply-To: <20041223063731.GW53357@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <20041223063731.GW53357@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >Most (all?) of the traffic on -newbies lately has been of technical >nature. That's not surprising, but there are a number of reasons why >it's not a good idea: > >1. It's not the original charter of the mailing list. For reference: > > This list is a gathering place for people new to FreeBSD. > Please feel free to share your experiences with others on this > list. > > Support questions should be sent to > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org. Technical questions should be > sent to freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org. (NOT to the newbies list > please) > > Full info and FAK http://www.welearn.com.au/freebsd/newbies/ > > Please read the info and FAK. They contain important information > regarding the purpose and use of this mailing list. > >2. There's already a mailing list for technical questions, as > mentioned above: FreeBSD-questions@FreeBSD.org. > >3. Most of the experienced people on the FreeBSD-questions list don't > read -newbies. If they do, they've been told not to answer > technical questions there. > >The result: ask a question on -newbies and you're less likely to get >an answer. If you do get an answer, it's less likely to be correct. >In either case, people on the -questions mailing list are not going to >see the answer, so even if the answer is correct, it's of less use to >the community at large. > >I'd suggest that we slowly disband this list (over a period of, say, >two weeks). There are plenty of other FreeBSD mailing lists, and it's >up to you to join them. If you're interested in technical issues, >-questions is the obvious one to join. > >Comments? >Greg >-- >See complete headers for address and phone numbers. > > Hi, I have some UNIX experience (mostly Solaris and Linux), and I wanted to toy with FreeBSD. I thought I could help with testing and documentation of tidbits/hacks, etc. However, I am not sure where I would go if this list is disbanded. The reason I chose this area to subscribe to was that I didn't want to plague the group with newbie questions. Unfortunately in other groups for other topics, some list members get rude. For example, in the jserv mailing list, the developers would chastise common questions and tell them to read some unavailable FAQ (they wanted to use FAQ-o-matic, but no one converted the original docs and the original docs were not available). Given prior bad experiences, I think perhaps maybe some of us were timid to ask questions of the newbie nature when approaching a new open source project. :-) If this is disbanded, I suggest putting out a weekly message re-directing users to new lists, and phase it out over a month. On the web page, note appropriate forums for questions of the newbie nature. - joaquin
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