On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Federico Sevilla III wrote: > 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?
In the sun managers list, the poster who asked the question would either: 1. Just summarize and post the answers. 2. Test the answers and post which is the right answer. To me, It's much better to recieve 1 chockful of e-mail where the answes are summarized than having to recieve 10 e-mails which are basically the same. This is good specially for repeat questions that surfaces every few months. As for the "volunteerism", people spend energy and time to answer a question. It would make sense that the posters who asked the questions would help back by summarizing the answers. > 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? Your analogy is both applicable to a discussion list or on the sun manager list. If one of the summarized answer is wrong, we can simply fire an e-mail that it's wrong. Same thing that we do on a discussion list. > 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. ;> I'm talking about the signal-to-noise ratio of the posts in PLUG. Not on the organization of the e-mails. > 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. Indeed. I could see that it's a culture thing. Filipinos love to discuss things. And very opinionated too! What maybe can be done is to let it as it is, but let the posters(who asked the question) give a choice if he will summarize or not. > 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. Hehehe.... substandard summaries. Very true. There are many answers that are subtly wrong or not apppriate. I like to point it out, but I don't have the time. Example, one posted a question on how to add network card modules on a stock LRP boot disk. One answered to recompile the kernel. That in itself is true, but the simplest answer is to simply grab the precompiled modules avail. on the LRP website. regards, --- Andre M. Varon, SCSA http://andre.lasaltech.com Fear can hold you prisoner, Hope can set you free. _ 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]
