[Novalug] function of the mailing list (was: tutorials).

Nino Pereira pereira@speakeasy.net
Sun Dec 17 16:32:15 EST 2006


On Sun, 2006-12-17 at 16:12 -0500, Gary Knott wrote:
> I concur with Nino.  A written 'howto' that explains
> something in detail - hopefully with some explaination of
> how it works as well, is a lasting contribution to the whole
> linux computing community!

Let me explain myself a little better.

What I found, and still find, most useful in this mailing
list is rapid, focused feedback on something that you don't know
how to do. Usually the question is very simple for experts, i.e., those
who use some program (be this ls, mkdir, tar, whatever) regularly (and
have a good memory). But, it can hang you up forever if you don't know
it, or when documentation it excessively terse.

It's as if you are sitting in what used to be called a 'computer room',
with lots of terminals and everyone typing away. You shout: 
" how the ($)^^$#%$) do you ... ?" (with the part in () optional).
Immediately people turn around and say: "ooh, you do ....". That's
usually good enough, and you can go on. Sometimes it doesn't work like
that. Then, you mention that, and somebody comes over, looks at your
screen, and says: "oh, you are in ...., so then you must do ...".
This solves the problem, but then, if you have time, you want to 
know how this works and you ask: "where can I find more on this"? and
someone says: " look at this web site", or "I'll send you a writeup".

IMHO, if the mailing list does nothing more than this it fulfills a
valuable service. People helping people, and vice versa. Writing
documentation is not needed, there is lots of it (and, if you feel like
doing something useful, the various open source projects often need
help in documentation). Extensive discussion of the minutiae of how
you can do things better (like, the recent one on awk vs perl vs sh)
may satisfy someone's urge to show off, but doesn't do anything for me:
I'm happy enough if I can get my work done more or less quickly, and
when I can still remember what I should do the next time I need the same
thing (so, no complicated commands, etc.). 

In return for help from the community, and to consolidate what you
learned, it would be nice if the helpee were to write a brief summary
of how the problem got solved, at least when it seems to be interesting
to enough people to risk clogging people's in-boxes with still another
email. Otherwise, I think it's courteous to thank those who made an
effort to help you.

Any comments? I write this now in part because I think others may also
think that the mailing list isn't functioning optimally.

Nino




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