Dave Barton wrote:
Subject: Re: List Proposal [Was: James K., may you please stop
sending answers without meaningful subjects?]
...
As a very new newbie here I thought I'd add my viewpoints for what
they're worth, because I think your proposal is a good one with the
exception of not being able to get further information. Perhaps to get
further information they would have to sign up, dunno right now.
Personally, I got to this list via searching for OOo with my newsreader.
This, I had *no* way to know that it was a mailing list based operation.
I suspect many newbies encounter the same thing.
I searched for and read posts that seemed to be along the lines of my
problem, and after thinking I'd figured out who some of the players were
and what type of information format was preferred, I posted to the
group.
However, I never saw my posts appear. So I posted again. Still no
response. I normally, as do many others, do not use a real email
address in newsgroups, so any response to my posts went to the bit
bucket of course.
When two of my posts still hadn't appeared I finally got curious
enough to go reading messages that pertained to list maintenance,
whatever, looking for reasons, and that's when I discovered 1. You must
use a real e-mail address and 2. you had to sign up.
Once I got all that straightened out and inspected the nntp refs on
the OO site, things finally became a little clearer. It still makes me
nervous that I have to use my real e-mail address to post, but AFAICT it
has only resulted in one spam, the one about the survey, coming to my
e-mail address so I have to assume bots and crawlers and spam are
somehow controlled. I think I did notice a Spamcop.net X-line or two in
the headers; not sure I recall that right.
So I guess what I'm saying is, newbies who find the list as I did by
searching with a newsreader, and I suspect that's a lot of them, do not
know they are accessing a mailing list based operation. It's "just
another newsgroup", so they wonder what's up.
In fact, this is the first time I've participated/used a mailing list
where I could also at the same time contribute directly to a newsgroup.
I have to wonder how many newbies submit a couple of questions, get
no responses, and simply go away because the newsgroup "doesn't work".
I know of at least one: My sister. It shook her confidence in OOo and
she's gone back to Word now even though OOo did evey single thing she
needed to do. Me, I've got some problems with OOo, but I'm going to
stick around if the community will have me in general. And I'm working
on my sister but she's still pissed off.
Hope that makes sense. I suspect first-timer-experiences may be a major
reason for the diffuculties causing you to make the proposal you did.
You may or may not recall that I asked what the no-subject posts were
about and shortly after that the tirade against them seems to have
started, so I may have accidentally gotten people thinking about them.
IMO, the best and least complex response may actually be to respond to
newbies or maybe a weekly FAQ or both, about how you have to sign up to
use the newsgroup and how it's not realy a "public" newsgroup. Most
people I've met don't even know there is any such thing.
Then you could explain the requirement of a real e-mail address too.
Just talking off the top of my head here, for what it's worth. IMO
you'll need some pretty classy up front design to keep complaints
minimized from the implementation of your proposal, although I still
agree with it.
One more thought, unless it goes against the grain. If new users of OOo
are good targets as I think they have to be, whatever you do is going to
create some screams from the current culture. IMO so be it: newcomers
will quickly outnumber them if this is handle properly. No one is ever
indispensible, regardless of their opinions of themselves. <g>
Regards,
Twayne
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