Re: Help

[Bruce Sass <bsass@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>]

On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Anthony Campbell wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 30, 2000 at 09:47:48PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > Robert Mognet wrote:
> > > > Let's don't make the operating system 'dumber'.  Let's have users
> > > > who are willing to learn. 

I don't think dumber == friendlier.
Since very few machines are being sold with Debian installed (or so I
gather), it is safe to assume that anyone on debian-user has already
shown a willingness to learn.  Should a mailing list's infrastructure
try to teach command line syntax and semantics?  If the list's
infrastructure is going to teach anything it should be how to manage
mailing lists. 

> > > The problem is, if you're unsubscribing from this list, you may well have
> > > given up. You don't want to learn. It seems silly to then shove learning
> > > down your throat to let you get off a list that no longer interests you.

Exactly.

> Well, at least you can say that once you *have* understood how to
> subscribe/unsubscribe to Debian, it's extremely easy to do, which is
> more than can be said for some of the lists I've tried to use.

All the info is there, but I wonder how many people delete the intro
message after reading it...

Every ML I've subscribed to sent me either a list of admin commands or
an email address to use in case of problems;  perhaps the first item in
this list's intro message should be a suggestion to create a "list-info"
folder and save all confirmation messages from mailing lists in it. 


later,

	Bruce