[plug] Re: Noise!

[Christian]

I guess I shouldn't find it surprising that the noisy people like the noise
and don't want that to change.  I also probably shouldn't find it
surprising that in their rush to make more noise they've missed the points
I was trying to make.

(note to Danny: If at first you don't succeed... *grin*)

At 13:34 6/08/98 +0800, you wrote:
>
>> I suppose that depends on your point of view. If you are an experienced
>> linux vet, I guess this would seem very noisy.
>
>Not to me.  I'm quite happy with the level of discussion on this list.. 
>Sure, it is very noisy, and signal to noise is very low, but I like the
>informality of this list.

I'm happy with the informality - just not the level of uninformative crap
(ie, "noise").  If you like uninformative crap there are plenty places to
get it and I don't think the Perth Linux Users Group mailing list should be
such a place.

>I think we'd kill the list, or at least the way we know it, if we set up a
>formal set of rules for everyone to follow.

Yeah, I don't think formal rules are needed either but basic guidelines
wouldn't hurt.  Guidelines like the one I suggested in my original email.
Less noise makes the list more useful.

>The only rules I'd like to see more people follow is the general
>netiquette ones like only quoting the relevant parts of the message you're
>replying to, and checking to see if someone else has already answered the
>question you're replying to, with the same info you're about to supply, so
>we don't get duplicate identical answers.

As I said before, checking if there might be a man page or a howto for this
topic, asking on IRC and perhaps doing a web search might be things we
should recommend people do before posting.

>> Short of constantly monitoring irc all day, I don't think I could
>> get the same benefit. 

I'm certainly not suggesting sitting on IRC, instead I'm talking about
asking questions on IRC first because a lot of the questions I've seen are
really basic and would doubtless be answered on IRC much faster than on
this list.  Particularly those which involve eliciting of further
information.  As someone said, IRC does have a much higher noise to signal
ratio than virtually any mailing list but you don't have to stay any longer
than it takes to answer your question.  Unless of course you want to... :P