Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!stevesc From: stevesc@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Schonberger) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Do *YOU* want to be able to ask questions here? Some say NO. Message-ID: <7233@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 4 Aug 89 02:12:29 GMT References: <4546@eos.UUCP> <56691@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Reply-To: stevesc@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Schonberger) Distribution: usa Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 33 In article <56691@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> J Greely writes: >In particular, quite a few of the questions posed so far show that the >authors have never heard of news.announce.newusers. > > Judging from the traffic, the detractors are right. Quick examples: > What is uunet? > What is usenet (and is it a subset of vnews)? [...] >>>From: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) >>>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. One way to deal with the problem is to simply not answer questions from people who aren't on your site. On the other hand, it is possible that this newsgroup does serve a good purpose. That is, if all the questions that should be answered by one sort or another of RTFM answer (that's Read The F Manual, to avert the inevitable questions) end up here, maybe there won't be so many of them elsewhere on the net. Saving net readers the trouble of reading half of the RTFM type questions would more than make up for the cost of propogating the newsgroup. Of course, the problem with that idea is that it probably won't get rid of those questions from other newsgroups. But if it at least reduces it, some good is done. Additionally, there are some questions that really are worth asking here. When they come up, they should be enthusiastically answered, and probably also addressed in a future edition of news.announce.newusers. Steve Schonberger microsoft!stevesc@uunet.uu.net