gnome-help-list suggestion

[Sam Vilain <sam hydro gen nz>]

After mentioning this idea to a certain chief gnomer, he suggested I
post it to this list.

There has been some talk of separating the general discussion, and the
"helpdesk" function of this newsgroup.  However, as has been
stipulated, people with limited time will not join or read the -help
mail list, especially given the likely volume (if anywhere near the
size of this list).  Thus the cries for help would go unanswered.

Recently I have subscribed to a list called the sun-managers list,
which implements a very simple question and answer system, and is very
effective.

Here are the principles:
  1:  This list is not moderated, just a normal majordomo list.
  2:  The list is intended to be a quick-turnaround trouble shooting
      aid.
  3: Answers to questions are to be mailed back to the questioner and
      are NOT to be sent to the entire list.  The person who
      originally asked the question has the responsibility of
      summarizing the answers and sending the entire summary back to
      the list.  When a summary is sent back to the list, it should
      contain the word "SUMMARY" as the first word of the "Subject"
      line.
  4:  Discussions on ANY topic are not allowed and will not be
      tolerated.  Messages that need discussion should go to the main
      gnome-list or the appropriate gnome-.*-list.
  5: Only help-type messages are to be posted to the list; everything
      that requires discussion should go to the main gnome-list. (Do
      we make a seperate list for gnome-coding-help?).  Examples of
      valid topics I can think of:
	- Compiling GNOME from tarballs
	- Compiling GNOME from CVS
	- Configuring pre-requisites for GNOME
	- Getting GNOME from CVS
	- Using GNOME (how do I turn on feature X?)
	- Debugging GNOME (? maybe just "getting useful information
	  out of gnome binaries for posting bug reports")
  6: Read the FAQ BEFORE posting, and if available, any help screens
      and "README" documents.  If you are compiling and having a
      problem, did you *really* follow all the instructions?
  
Principles 3 and 4 are the real meat - it is my assertion from
experience on the sun-managers list that these points will mean:
  1. Easier FAQ generation and maintenance
  2. Lower list volumes
  3. (empirical) faster Q&A turnaround
  4. (empirical) less time wasted by newcomers.

I look forward to hearing your comments.
-- 
Sam Vilain, sam@whoever.com         work: sam.vilain@unisys.com
http://www.hydro.gen.nz                home: sam@hydro.gen.nz