[plug] Cheap Linux??

[Peter Wright]

On Fri, Oct 08, 1999 at 01:39:59PM +0800, Christian wrote:
> Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> > This should be a FAQ.  Other FAQs might be "What books can I get
> > to learn about Linux", "What Linux archives are accessible over
> > WAIX", "Where can I find a commercial Linux consultant", "How can
> > Linux play my MP3s", etc.  Does anyone think a PLUG FAQ list would
> > be a good idea?
> 
> It would be a good idea - except no one would bother to look at it.

Perhaps a slight exaggeration. :)

> FAQs are only really useful when newbies (who usually ask the frequent
> questions) take a look at them before posting to a list - and newbies
> (almost by definition) don't do this.  The majority of list traffic
> would become: newbie asks question, newbie gets referred to FAQ. 

If you can only earn the newbie qualification by asking FAQs, it'd
hardly be surprising that "newbies" would tend to do it a lot. :)

I suspect your perception has been coloured by the fact that the more
clueful people don't tend to appear "newbie-ish" initially, so they
don't get included in your evaluation set of newbies.

> Whether this would be a bad thing or not is debatable. :)

Maybe we could experiment with adapting one of the IRC "answer" bots
that are out there (I read about them in a Perl Journal article a
little while ago). Mail appears that fits the criteria of being:
below a certain length, containing FAQ keywords, containing question
marks), etc. can be answered by the answer bot mailing them the
relevant FAQ chunk. Oooh! and the bot could include a (completely
unreliable) score for how clueless it rates the person's question.
Even more fun.

This would have the additional advantage of being very irritating for
people who write mails that accidentally fall into the FAQ category,
and causing great amusement for everyone else, not to mention endless
threads of witty arguments on the nature of truth and the quest for
knowledge.

> Regards,
> 
> Christian.

:)

Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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