Time to shut down this list?

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004, Charles Oppermann wrote:
>>>1.  It's not the original charter of the mailing list.  For reference:
>
>I've always thought this was silly.  All throughout the internet "newbies"
>implies beginner.  A newbie mailing list regarding an operating system is
>naturally going to have people posting technical questions.  Even if the
>newbie is aware of the technical questions mailing list, they may make the
>choice to post to freebsd-newbies because of intimidation.

I tend to agree with this.  A list that caters to ``newbies'' should be a
friendly place where people feel free to ask what might be considered
simple questions on the more technical lists.  Learning any new OS can be
intimidating, and, even for people like me who read technical docs for fun,
knowing where to look is part of the learning curve.

One has to strike a balance though as list proliferation can make it
difficult to find answers.  As an example the python and zope communities
seem to have a list for every possible topic, and people can get downright
unfriendly if a question is posted to the ``wrong'' list.

Bill
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