List replies

[Tore Lund]

Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> [snip]
> We don't accept email only from lurkers.  The mailing list is  also
> advertized as the official place to ask questions in CD-ROMs provided by
> vendors, in our documentation, on magazines, conferences, and so on.

The normal thing on all other forums that I have heard of - and that
includes Usenet - is that you have to go back to the forum to pick up
answers to your question.  The mechanism that you defend represents a
break with established practice for most computer users.  I have heard
all the arguments many times over, and I don't buy them.  I think it
would be better to direct newbies to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc, which
at least has a predictable interface.  (For instance, you don't risk
missing the rest of a discussion because someone decides to prune the
headers.)

> We don't want to make it _obligatory_ to subscribe, because this would
> alienate users who are too new to the Internet to be familiar with
> lists, subscriptions, and similar 'filtering' things.

There is a touching concern for newbies in all this, which is out of
step with the somewhat edgy aspect of FreeBSD that most of you seem to
embrace in other connections.  And the bottom line is that most newbies
end up elsewhere.  If making FreeBSD more popular is a priority, there
is long list of issues that are more vital than this detail that we are
discussing in this thread.

Happy Easter!
-- 
    Tore