Which is exactly why most lists are useless. If you're experienced in something, you might not be interested in combing through hundreds of e-mails per week reading messages that reintroduce issues that were discussed only a week before. Consider that if you try to make a list the way you suggest, the people who have the answers are the ones who are most likely to be turned off, as they will rarely learn anything new and what new things they have to learn will be buried beneath long passages rehearsing well-known information. Or consider this case: in technology there is often more than one way to do something. Imagine what would happen if every expert answer were answered by another expert answer that favored a different approach. How quickly before the list maintains a traffic level like that of the "Why not NT?" thread or the current certification thread? There is certainly a lot to be said, and it possible that any effort to be thorough would guarantee further argumentation and a proliferation of suggestions as to the right way, which was, after all, what the poster really wanted to know in the first place, right? The issue is that this list covers an area that virtually never admits of quick answers, almost never admits of easy answers, and one of the greatest problem in this field seems to be that "professional" take this position themselves. What kind of enlightenment has been achieved when one still believes that everything is easy or simple? More than anything else, this seems to encourage the worst habits imaginable. Rather than dreaming about messages that contain all the information needed to understand their contents, why not encourage people to send messages that answer the question as directly as possible while highlighting the need for the uninitiated reader to read supplementary materials? If you want to argue this philosophically, I can assure that your position is untenable. -Bayard Bell Emory University > I think most people post mailing > lists because they want a quick answer that they can understand, so that > they don't have to pour over endless links to stuff they don't care about > or have time to look at. That's certainly why I do it. > > Derek D. Martin | UNIX System Administrator > [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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