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From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Instant garbage: news.newusers.questions
Message-ID: <43728@bbn.COM>
Date: 3 Aug 89 14:08:10 GMT
References: <79379@pyramid.pyramid.com> <48zh022L458h01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <4547@eos.UUCP>
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Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
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In article <4547@eos.UUCP> chguest@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (C. J. Guest) writes:
}In an article from ba.news.groups and ca.news.groups,
} gam@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Gordon Moffett) writes:
}>In the referenced article, csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes:
}># The recently voted-on/created news.newusers.questions is, IMHO, the most
}># perfect example of a topic that does *not* belong in a newsgroup that I have
}># ever seen. It has become an instant cesspool of trivial questions followed
}># by a flood of repetitive (and frequently wrong) answers.
}>I just took a look at news.newusers.questions;  Carl's right,
}>what a mistake this was!  Clearly a defect of the "democratic"
}>process ....  It's outta here, too.
}>Gordon A. Moffett                             gam@uts.amdahl.com
}>+1 408 746-8287		      {ames,sun,uunet,decwrl}!amdahl!gam
}
}
}It is sad when a few people feel that they are above the rest of us
}when it comes to deciding whether or not the results of a vote are 
}valid or not. Gordon, Carl, and the rest should allow the following
}to speak for itself and leave things as they are.
}
}
  [voting results deleted]

Thanks to the poorness with which the notes were written, you've entirely
missed their point, which _might_ be valid.  There is a problem: it is VERY
hard for newcomers to pick up all the lore, abbreviations, conventions, etc
that are the underpinnings of making this whole exercise more-or-less work.
Now, net.announce.newusers is a wonderful thing, but it suffers from two
problems: * on almost every site it is almost always empty (due to problems
	    with the expiration of the messages.. this is not the place to
	    discuss THAT problem and why it prevails, only to observe that it
	    is true)
	  * As good as those postings are, they cannot actually answer EVERY
	    qustion a newcomer might have... having an interactive advisor is
	    clearly necessary and useful.
The question is how best to answer those needs.  The fact that we "voted" on
them, and that some plurality of folks with enough insight to type "R" and
then "yes" said "go do it" *hardly* means that we (the collective we here)
have necessarily hit upon the best way to deal with these problems.

The first thing I observe is that I hope someone is watching this group and
selecting appropriate things for inclusion in the news.announce.newusers
``information packet''.  The second thing, which is more disturbing, is that
intentions aside, it is bothersome seeing assorted responses range from the
outrageously ill-informed to the profoundly deep (from which most ALL of us
could learn something), and everywhere in between.   The third thing is that
there should be some mechanism to get new users to use *availalbe* resources
to find out answers, rather than just poking here for anything that crosses
their mind [same logic here as with directory assistance: you should try to
look it up YOURSELF in the phone book before you call, right?]

I don't know how this experiment is going to work out, but I DO think it is
worth evaluating it and seeing if it proving to be useful or workable.  The
most obvious thing that comes to mind would be to make it moderated; another
(as was suggested) might be to limit its distribution to the local site.
Dunno, but it is certainly worth watching and deciding if this is bit of net
bandwidth is actually SERVING the purpose for which the 'yes' voters intended
it.  It is really too early to say one way or the other, but the early
indications, to my eye, are just as the 'ba' folk observed: this is going to
be a bit TOO unruly to really do its job well, but I'm willing to wait and
see.

   __
  /  )                              Bernie Cosell
 /--<  _  __  __   o _              BBN Sys & Tech, Cambridge, MA 02238
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