On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 01:07:32AM +0530, Clinton Goveas wrote:
Who let the dogs out? On a more serious note, it is
good that some of
these issues did come out so that we get a chance to see where we stand
on each of them.
First of all, you seem to be using a rather strange quoting style. The
string "> " is considered the default leadin for lines that are
quoted from earlier messages. Most mail clients are designed to
recognise this leadin and use a different style to render quoted text.
Also please do not just put your reply on top of someone else's mail
... a lot of people have been doing that lately. It really hurts the
mail digest that some people read. Also, such a style leads to
unnecessarily long mails that have very little signal to noise ratio.
So this list is only for sys admins? The other Linux
users should seek
help or information elsewhere? People don't discuss issues here to
impress others with "quality". They have problems and ask for solutions,
and I think this makes this list a good source of tactical knowledge in
the Linux area. If you take that away, this list is pretty much devoid
of utility.
The ultimate selling point of free software has been the vast user
community that is ready to help and really really comprehensive
documentation that _does_ work. Enough people have put in enough
effort to generate documentation that can take care of almost all
questions that a lay user could possibly ask. People should atleast
take an equivalent amount of effort to first search for documentation!
If everyone starts asking every little question on the list, will any
useful work ever get done?
By "tactical knowledge" I assume you mean short-term, troubleshooting
capability. Do you mean to say that people on this list are here to
solve every little problem that comes along for Joe Ramaswamy, the
newbie? First try to solve the problem yourself - search on google,
look at the documentation. If you still can't post here describing
what you did, and clearly stating what went wrong. If people can help
and have the time, they will.
NOTE: "You" symbolises any general user, not just Clinton Goveas.
Common questions can be clubbed together to form FAQs,
which new
members should see before they arrive at the sign-in info page for this
list. This would do away with Phillip's common nagging questions
problem.
Take cover, people! He abused the "P"-word!!! :-D
People don't even read the list guidelines that are sent to them when
they sign in. You expect them to read an FAQ _before_ they join, which
probably answers questions that they don't even know exist??
Sameer.