Harold Fuchs wrote:
<snip lots />
I sort of agree with most of what you say. The problem is that even though
we've discussed this so often nothing has been done to fix it. There were
some very intelligent proposals several months ago from people (including
you, I think) who know a lot more than I do about listservs and web forums
and how they could be made to work effectively for us but all we get is
silence or "it's on the 'too hard' pile".
No point waving a stick when the wavee is invisible, unless you're Harry
Potter ;-)
So, until it's fixed I'll hold my position.
I am new to the OOo lists (but not new to lists and OSS in general).
I must say in first few days of following this I was very surprised by
the amount of repetitive questions:
* Someone is SELLING OOo (No really!)
* I bought it from X now I want to upgrade/get something else/make a copy...
* The MAC thing
* etc etc etc
I do realise that this list in particular may well be the first time
these new users come into contact with OSS and the way things work, so
we do have a responsibility to be friendly, welcoming and not
patronising. However, there MUST be a way, surely, to provide new
visitors with links to FAQs, and some nettiquette explanations.
One way some high-traffic lists do this is to automatically publish a
message (probably daily on this list would be necessary) which has a
subject line along the lines of:
"NEW VISITOR? PLEASE READ THIS MESSAGE *BEFORE* POSTING"
In there would be a brief explanation of the list (who it is, what it is
and how to frame your question), a link to a relevant FAQ, and a link to
a search tool so they can search the list to see if their questions has
been asked/answered before ;-)
Perhaps that could help to catch some of the noobs
Hope I'm not teaching anyone to suck eggs...
Alan
http://www.theopensourcerer.com
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