Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 13:49:07 +1000 (EST) From: Gary Roberts <gary@wcs.uq.oz.au> To: hsu@freefall.cdrom.com (Jeffrey Hsu) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Gating hackers into the newsgroups Message-ID: <9504250349.AA15765@wcs.uq.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199504250239.TAA07177@freefall.cdrom.com> from "Jeffrey Hsu" at Apr 24, 95 07:39:41 pm
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Jeffrey Hsu writes: > > OK, having been stupid enough to put my hand up in the first place, here > > is what I see myself being able to do. > Do you have any idea how many 100s of CDROMs WC ships every week? How Actually yes, I have a pretty good idea. Blind Freddie would understand that WC would not be able to continue with the excellent support for FreeBSD if it were *not* selling *lots* of CDs. > many of these newbies do you think you're going to be able to handle > manually? Enough to hopefully make a small difference. If nobody at least *tries* to make a difference, we may as well all go and join the Linux camp. I happen to vastly prefer FreeBSD and I'd like to try to help ... > Since most of these newbie problems will be the same, a newbie FAQ, What I'm trying to do is in *addition* to the FAQ mechanism. Others working on FAQs aren't going to be affected by what I'm attempting. My perception (correct me if I'm wrong) is that many people don't take the trouble to read FAQs, READMEs, INSTALL_NOTES, etc and just blaze away with questions anyway which swamp the developers. They do send e-mail or post to newsgroups so I imagine they would be mightily impressed to receive personalised assistance from a dedicated helper. Hopefully, the *committed* user base thereby grows and the whole process eventually snowballs -- and we catch up and surpass Linux :->. > periodically broadcast to the newsgroup, would be a much more effective > solution. You could compile the info for this FAQ from old > list mail and newsgroups questions. Our current collection of FAQs > should also help. People who've just helped a newbie with a new problem > could send a short writeup to you for inclusion in the newbie FAQ. > > This way, you could reach thousands and thousands of newbie who see > the FAQ on the newsgroup all at once rather than individually. Yeah, but as they say "Nothing engenders brand loyalty more than good, old-fashioned, personalised service". Cheers, -- Gary Roberts (gary@wcs.uq.edu.au) (Ph +617 844 0400 Fax +617 844 0444) 4th Floor, South Bank House, 234 Grey St, South Bank QLD 4101 Australia.
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