[Mailman-Users] Meta: bringing along the newcomers

[Lindsay Haisley]

On Fri, 2009-12-18 at 14:55 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Somebody-whom-I-don't-want-to-pick-on-in-particular writes:
> 
>  > On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 12:00:34PM -0500, (Some) Poor Fellow
> wrote:
>  > > Thanks
>  > 
>  > please don't 
>  >     (1) reply to list-posts off-list: send them to the list; 
>  >     (2) top-post
> 
> Given the recent surge in non-traditional list admins (ie, folks
> without a Unix or mail admin background), I feel this is excessively
> curt.

Stephen, with all due respect for the work you put into your post, I
think it goes a bit overboard in the other direction.  If I can pose a
question in 6 or 7 lines of text, do I really need to read a couple of
hundred lines of instruction?  - or dig through a FAQ and write a
critique of it - just to get a simple answer?

I recently posted a question to this list in about 7 lines inquiring as
to what file is the source document in a Mailman Pipermail archive.  I
asked on the list precisely _because_ I didn't want to spend the time
searching through FAQs and other documentation for a simple answer to a
simple question.  Mark kindly answered my question within a few minutes
with two lines - one with the name of the file in question and the
second with the URL of a wiki entry discussing the matter in some detail
(thank you, Mark!).

I think your post has some good ideas, but needs a generous application
of the KISS principle :-)

-- 
Lindsay Haisley       | "Never expect the people who caused a problem
FMP Computer Services |  to solve it."  - Albert Einstein
512-259-1190          |        
http://www.fmp.com    |