Xref: utzoo news.newusers.questions:115 news.groups:11352
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!bingvaxu!cjoslyn
From: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,news.groups
Subject: Re: Instant garbage: news.newusers.questions
Summary: An actual suggestion!
Message-ID: <2361@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 4 Aug 89 00:11:51 GMT
References: <79379@pyramid.pyramid.com> <48zh022L458h01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> <4547@eos.UUCP> <43728@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 33

In article <43728@bbn.COM> cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) writes:
>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.

Excellent analysis: *clearly news is not the best way to distribute the
n.a.newuser packets*! If n.n.q was moderated, the moderator could act as
a manual file server.  An actual server could be set up, but that begs
the question: how does a novice know to get to the server? What is
needed is an obvious way to get help, i.e.  a newsgroup to post to. 

Other topics that should be addressed in newuser docs for automatic
distribution:

	How to work uuen/decode/zoo
	How to work ftp
	Where the primary archive locations are
	etc.

Just my 2 cents.
-- 
O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large
| Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .