On Mon, 25 Mar 2002 at 01:22, Andre M. V. wrote: > I second to that. What basically happens in Sun-Manager is that someone > ask a question, people in the list respond to the guy/gal, not to the > list. > > The guy/gal then sends to the list an e-mail that gives credits to > people who responded to him/her, and summarizes the answer to the > question. > > It's clear, neat and won't clutter your inbox. list manager of the plug > mailing lists, can we do that?
While I'm sure this has pros, and obviously works in a number of settings, I am pessimistic about implementing this sort of change to PLUG's mailing lists. Here are some thoughts on why: o First this relies not only on the "volunteerism" of the original question-poster, as Ian pointed out, but further depends on their capability to have understood the answers to their question. I'd like to make an analogy of a patient asking a panel of doctors a question, or describing his problem, and then having the burden of summarizing the points of the doctors and relaying it to a bigger group of doctors and patients. How can Doctor1 know that Patient's summary of the replies of Doctor2 and Doctor3 are accurate, when Patient is not a doctor himself? o Furthermore, suppose Doctor2 is an idiot, Doctor3 actually a fellow patient, and Doctor4 someone with malicious intents. There's no peer review as far as these doctors' answers are concerned. Doctor1 (the "real" "good" doctor) can't tell Patient that Doctor2's reply was idiotic, Doctor3 didn't know anything about what he was mumbling about, and Doctor4's solution would actually kill him. And what's worse, Doctor1 cannot tell Patient, and all the other "doctors" -WHY- these are so. I believe explaining why something is stupid is much better than simply saying it's stupid. And how can anyone do that if only Patient can see the replies? o While this may generally unclutter our general inboxes[1], imagine the toll on the person who asked the question. Not only does he get multiple answers. Until he posts a summary, he can get multiple parallel, or multiple conflicting replies! In the current setup those of us who pay attention can more-or-less decide if there are still gaps to fill in, or if the question has been answered to its fullness. o This further requires a more one-to-one dedication on the part of the "doctors". With the current setup it's possible to fill in one part, and then get busy, and come back and only take it from where the last "doctor" left off. [1] Note that my PLUG mail goes to a folder of its own and not my main inbox. So PLUG mail doesn't really bother me when I'm busy. I can choose to read all of this "non-important" mail when I've got the time. And if I don't have the time, I can simply purge the directory and start from scratch. ;> Anyway, that's all I've thought of so far. Note that I am not bashing the concept you propose IN GENERAL. I am merely pointing out what I see may make it inappropriate for PLUG as the PLUG lists are now, and how the culture we already have is. I vote for the status quo as far as this is concerned. Furthermore, I believe that PLUG is a discussion group. And at least I enjoy reading the variety of responses as they come, as they were written. I personally appreciate these raw responses from the guru's than imaginally substandard summaries from gurus-to-be. But that's just me. If I speak for anyone else, say aye. :) --> Jijo -- Federico Sevilla III : <http://jijo.free.net.ph/> Network Administrator : The Leather Collection, Inc. GnuPG Key Fingerprint : 0x93B746BE _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
