Re: 5.0 newbies: FreeBSD's future [was: Re: Tracking -CURRENT]

From: Cliff L. Biffle <cbiffle_at_safety.net>
Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 00:33:42 -0700
Well said.

Speaking as someone who -is- subscribed to both current_at_ and cvs-all_at_, I got 
something on the order of three hundred new messages from the two lists 
today.  Expecting a user of 5.0-RELEASE who is tracking head for the bugfixes 
to read -- or even skim -- all these is, well, a tall order.

However, I also recognize that a lot of developers aren't interested in 
answering questions, particularly ones that, to someone immersed in the code, 
seem dumb.

Perhaps a new mailing list is in order?  I'm generally not a proponent of 
fragmenting mailing lists, since more often than not the people with 
questions are on one, while the people with answers are on another.  However, 
what do y'all think about a current-questions sort of list?  current_at_ tends 
to be more devel-oriented, and questions_at_ tends to be clueless about -current 
or even 5.0.  I know I would have benefited from it greatly early on (and 
probably still would).

As far as searching the mailing list archives, that's all well and good -- as 
long as you know what to search for, which a lot of people don't.  "My 
computer won't leave the bootloader" doesn't translate for most people into a 
search query of "disabling ACPI."  :-)  (For relatively recent converts, it 
doesn't even translate to "my computer won't leave the bootloader," for that 
matter.)  The fact of the matter is that humans are vastly better 
natural-language search engines than what we have on the mailing list 
manager, assuming they're in a position to answer questions (are willing and 
have the time).  A separate questions list might resolve this...maybe.  
Thoughts?

-Cliff L. Biffle
Received on Wed Apr 30 2003 - 22:33:13 UTC

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