From: jim@n5ial.mythical.com (Jim Graham) Subject: Re: Mailing list for Newbies? Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1993 14:06:20 GMT
In article <a2su2B1w165w@micromed.com> system@micromed.com (Duane Davis)
writes:
>Every 'Newbie' I have talked to has expressed the same feeling as I.
>Comp.os.linux is not a very friendly place for the person new to Linux.
well, here's one person (who was recently new to Linux...not to UNIX, but
new to Linux) who disagrees with you. I've gotten nothing but good help
from this group, and all from people who were quite ready to help however
they could. this trend has continued even up to this morning---I have
more than a few e-mail messages that came in during last night's UUCP poll
regarding some stuff I'd asked about recently.
>Most of this is due to the volume of messages in the newsgroup.
sure, it's a high-volume newsgroup. but that's due to the fact that
there is an awful lot of stuff going on here. there's nothing that
says you have to read every single article, though. :-)
>In an effort to help these people I am willing to host a 'Linux newbie
>mailing list' where there aren't any 'what not to post here' or 'read this
>before posting' messages to intimidate you.
first off, ignore the ``what not to post here'' post that appeared a while
back. it appeared to be either a badly-timed April fool's joke or someone
on a power trip. it certainly wasn't intended to be taken seriously.
as for the ``READ THIS BEFORE POSTING'' post, I've talked (via e-mail, of
course) to the guy who posts this, and it is definitely not intended to
intimidate anyone (I'd originally made this mistake, too, btw, when it was
worded a bit differently). it's intended to give you pointers to where
you can find certain info faster and easier than you would if you posted
here. if you haven't looked at it recently, take a look---he's revised
the wording now to where it doesn't lend itself so easily to this type of
mis-interpretation.
>Do you think this is a good idea? a bad idea? Let me know. If I get
>enough positive responses I will set it up with a weekly auto-poster
>telling c.o.l readers how to find it.
personally, I think it's a bad idea. c.o.l isn't hostile toward new
Linux users....if it was, there wouldn't be any new Linux users. like I
said earlier, I've gotten a lot of great help here. also, if all the
new folk leave here, they're in a pretty good position to miss out on a
lot of stuff they might be very interested in, if they knew about it.
I'd originally heard that c.o.l was hostile toward new folk, but this
has turned out to be nothing but pure BS...quite the opposite is, in
fact, the case.
if anything, people just need to pay attention to how they post their
question. I see lots of subject lines with things like ``I NEED HELP''
or ``PLEASE READ THIS'' that, of course, nobody ever reads. then, I see
people who, instead of calmly describing a problem and asking for help, go
straight to being hostile and say this or that sucks because they couldn't
install it....this, of course, is going to make a lot of people get hostile
with them (they asked for it, they got it).
--jim