From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31853 invoked by alias); 22 Jul 2002 06:04:25 -0000 Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Received: (qmail 31843 invoked from network); 22 Jul 2002 06:04:24 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ns.helixdigital.com) (68.15.28.22) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 22 Jul 2002 06:04:24 -0000 Received: from ns.helixdigital.com (alcocer@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ns.helixdigital.com (8.12.2/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g6M64Nfs011340 for ; Sun, 21 Jul 2002 23:04:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from alcocer@localhost) by ns.helixdigital.com (8.12.2/8.12.2/Submit) id g6M6387v030229 for cygwin@cygwin.com; Sun, 21 Jul 2002 23:03:08 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 01:39:00 -0000 From: Dario Alcocer To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: Re: FYI: HTML targets in "Smart Questions" Message-ID: <20020721230308.B28186@ns.helixdigital.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i In-Reply-To: ; from dockeen@mchsi.com on Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 09:05:29PM -0400 X-SW-Source: 2002-07/txt/msg01681.txt.bz2 On Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 09:05:29PM -0400, Dockeen wrote: > Instead of a second list, perhaps a second tier of community members > might take it on themselves to pseudo-officially handle the newbie > questions. I don't advocate a second-tier of newbie supporters. My proposal would *still* rely on the mailing list at large to answer questions. The quality of the questions would be better, however, hopefully leading to a more satisfying situation for both newbies and experienced users alike. Let me explain how my "pseudo-moderation" of first-time posters would work in practice. Hopefully the subsequent examples will help clarify my proposal. OK, here's my first example: FIRST EXAMPLE: ------------- 1. New user encounters a problem using Cygwin, refers to Cygwin home-page, finds mailing list link, and subscribes to mailing list. 2. New user sends their question to the mailing list: "How come you guys don't include XEmacs? Where do I get it? I need it so I can finish my programming project by Friday. PLEASE HELP ME NOW!!!" 3. The ezmlm mailing list manager gets his e-mail, and before sending it to the rest of the subscribers, looks his address up in a database of some sort. The software will determine that this is the first post from this subscriber, so instead of sending the message on to the mailing list, it will instead send him the following message: "Hello, and thanks for using Cygwin! We've noticed that this is your first post to the list, and we'd like to make you aware of the correct way to ask questions on this list. We need to do this because our list is a very high-volume list, and in order to manage the volume, we ask that subscribers follow a few simple rules before they begin participating on the list. The rules are contained in Eric Raymond's 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.' [link would be here] Please read the essay in its *entirety*. Not doing so will only delay getting your question answered." "Once you've read the essay, please take this quiz [link to quiz would be here]; passing this 3-question quiz will demonstrate you've read the essay, and thus will be ready to re-post your question. Don't worry, the quiz is a *very* simple multiple-choice quiz to test that you've read the essay. Messages posted from your account will be allowed only once you've passed the quiz." 4. The new user will read the "first-time poster" message (see above) and realize he needs to Search the Fine Web before asking his particular question. A Google search will then quickly reveal that he must run the XEmacs Cygwin installer to install his software. 5. At this point, the new user doesn't bother re-posting his, since his question has been answered. So, this first example shows the following: * No list traffic is generated from his question. * He learns how to ask questions on this mailing list in the future. * The software he wants gets installed. Here's my second example: SECOND EXAMPLE: -------------- a. New user encounters problem, and mails question to list: "Hey, I found that the MumbleFratz package is crashing. I'm stuck and I need this working now so I can finish my final project which is due next week. PLEASE HELP ME!!!" b. The ezmlm mailing list manager gets his e-mail, and determines that this is the first post from this subscriber; this results in him getting the "first-time poster" message (see above for contents of this message.) c. New user reads "first-time poster" message, then reads the ESR essay as instructed, and passes the quiz. d. Because he read the essay, he now realizes that he must reformulate his question, removing the emotional plea and including specific clues that might help others determine a fix for his problem: "I found that if I do a find using the MumbleFratz package, and I try to pipe the results to Bass-o-matic, I get a core dump (core dump is on my FTP site.)" e. He re-posts his reformulated question; this time, ezmlm notices that he passed his quiz, and enables his e-mail address for posting. f. The mailing list members now see his reformulated question, and several offer to help, eventually arriving at a fix for his problem. So, this second example shows the following: * No list traffic is generated from his first question, which improves the signal to noise ratio. * His question gets answered, not ignored, since he now knows how to ask "smart questions." * He learns how to ask questions on this mailing list in the future. I hope the examples help clarify what I was proposing. I'm still reading up on ezmlm, so I don't have anything nailed down yet. However, once I do, rest assured I will get further input from everyone before I even try to run this past Chris Faylor. (He's got enough to do without hearing from another joker like me ;-) BTW, I'm not the mailing list admin anyway, so I can only propose my solution, after some research on my part. -- Dario Alcocer -- Sr. Software Developer, Helix Digital Inc. alcocer@helixdigital.com -- http://www.helixdigital.com -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/