Time to shut down this list?

[Jeff Lewis]

I'm a newbie, and until now, a lurker.

I do not want this list disbanded. I believe that I belong here.

I do like reading/learning from the questions asked/answered,
and am mildly disappointed when I see the person referred to the
-questions list. I understand the original charter of the list.

I see little that truly DOES follow the charter.

I do NOT however believe that I can "run with the big dogs" on the
-questions list. The sheer volume alone makes it impossible for me
to filter out what I will grasp (I am a lurker) as many of the
questions are over my head, let alone the follow-up and answers.
At best, I can only google for keywords when I have a question,
or post one myself. I have posted on some Red Hat linux -questions
lists with pretty sad results.

I applaud you Greg for bringing this subject up as it really does
need some discussion. And trying to stand in your shoes for just
a moment, I appreciate your concern for folks asking questions
and not getting answers, or worse, getting an incorrect answer
from another newbie. And I thank you for that.

I'd like to broaden the discussion, just a little.

You suggested disbanding the list. I would suggest modifying the
charter.

I've tried several times to figure out how to word this question
nicely, and it always comes off smug. It's not how I mean it, but
here goes anyway.

Who does this list serve?

If it serves the Experienced by documenting the newbie experience or
even just segregating newbie discussions, then your suggestion of
disbanding the list may indeed be the right one. There doesn't seem
to be alot of that happening here. We are noobs, just not prolific
ones. <g>

I will assume that you want all the Newbie questions on the -questions
list rather than here because THAT is where those willing to take the
time to answer them are. Not at all an unreasonable request.

But if this list serves the Newbies, and we (the Newbies) would
like to have questions answered here, then maybe it is time to modify
the charter. The PROBLEM with this is that the relationship is a
one-way symbiotic relationship. Newbies asking question won't get
very far without the Willing Experienced.

Perhaps the REAL underlying question to this whole discussion is,

          "What are we going to do with the Newbies?"
                              - or -
          "What are we going to do for the Newbies?"

And please note: the "WE" referenced above is an eclectic group of
dedicated individuals that know FreeBSD and are willing spend time
with those of us that don't know it. The ability and desire to teach
is often a lot more difficult than you might think -- and doubly so
on a mailing list where you cannot tell what the person's existing
knowledge or background is.

Wes Peters just posted the following question: "Come on, newbies,
let's hear YOUR ideas on how to get better answers for your questions."

Sir, I'd like to ask my newbie questions here and I really do
appreciate hearing from experieced FreeBSD users. If this isn't
feasible, then how can I ask question properly on the -questions list
so that folks answering them will not assume that I understand alot.
Prefixing the subject line with NEWBIE could work. Will it also mean
that it will be ignored by most?

Case in point:

I just got my hardware ready. I will be loading 4.10 on my new test
box. (5.2.1 hated the ACPI and required that I select NO ACPI from
the menu all the time.) I wanted to mirror software that my ISP uses
so I tried to find out what version of the OS they were running.

It took me 20 minutes of googling to find the uname command. Then I
had to find the same for perl and php (easier). I never did find out 
how to do this for apache.

But I would never have asked that question on the -questions list
because I felt stupid. I didn't ask that question here because we 
aren't supposed to.

Jeff


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