[rhn-users] List confusions

Wed Jan 24 16:47:59 UTC 2007

This is a "me too" post.

I also found myself confused by the name of the list
and ended up here even though this is not what I first expected.

I thought that the name implied that this list was an adjunct
to the paid-for service of red hat support, and that it would
have red hat employees on here willing to help me solve problems
with my red hat system.... similar to the forums on Oracle's Metalink...
and in contrast to a more "fellow pilgrims struggling with redhat" type
of support.

But as you know, that isn't it at all.

I think kind redirection to other lists is good.
I think a list purpose email sent once a month would be good.
(Otherwise I don't think there would be much traffic here at all.)

I think that some compassion for other wandering souls is appropriate.

(And I still don't know which list actually has the ear of redhat
support.  So if I run into any problem I will use the telephone.)

Chris Howard
Platte River Power Authority
howardc at prpa.org

-----Original Message-----
From: rhn-users-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:rhn-users-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of jef e
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 9:36 AM
To: Discussions about Red Hat Network (rhn.redhat.com)
Subject: Re: [rhn-users] NIS or automounter problem

Máirín Duffy wrote:

> How did folks here initially find out about this list (if you can
> remember)?

I honestly don't remember. I *think* it was on the RHN help section,
here: https://rhn.redhat.com/help/contact.pxt

> Some ideas I had:
> 
> (1) We could make a policy that if an off-topic question is asked, we
> first let the question asker know that this is not the appropriate list
> and provide a list of links that might be helpful for them (I can come
> up with that list if needed, although the list info page is a good start
> [1]).

This helps, and a few folks have tried it in the past, but I think that
it gets frustrating when others start replying and answering the
questions anyhow. I tried a few weeks of relying off-list, but that too
got frustrating for the same reasons. There was no need for them to go
to the other lists because they were getting help here.

> (2) We could cc the reply with the quoted question to the appropriate
> list with the answer if we know it. (Is this terrible mailing list
> etiquette?)

Probably a bad idea, and confusing to people that are already confused
over what this list is for. And probably irksome if we cc the wrong list
ourselves ;-)

> (3) We could reply to the question asker privately (I think it's better
> for everyone if questions are answered publicly, though, for the benefit
> of folks running into the same problems in the future searching for an
> answer.)

This sounds like the right thing to do from a certain level, but doing
so continues to let this problem drag on. If off-topic discussions
aren't discouraged, they will never stop.

> (4) We could send out a monthly reminder to mailing list subscribers
> with an explanation of what the mailing list is about and redirects to
> other lists (I don't like the idea of sending out so much mail, but I'm
> on other mailing lists that do this - they send out their policies/rules
> on a monthly basis.)

I'm also on a few lists that do this. I'm not sure that it ever does
much good.

First, you have the new subscribers who join and then post their
off-topic question right away. They won't see a monthly mailing for it
to matter.

Second - and this relates to point #3 you made above - you have the long
time subscribers who, despite messages being off-topic,  let the
discussion continue by offering help via the list. I'm not saying that
people shouldn't offer help, I'm just saying that messages to this list
are *not* the place to do it. These folks might want to consider
replying off-list, letting the original sender know that the list isn't
the proper place to be looking for an answer.

This is probably too difficult to pull off, but I think that some
renaming of the lists would help. Names like Taroon-list and Nahant-list
mean hardly anything to me, since I am not a heavy Redhat user - what do
they mean to the brand new user? Probably even less. I think the "user'
in rhn-user pulls most of these folks in. So even redhat-list probably
gets overlooked because it isn't called redhat-user-list.We already know
that a lot of people can't be bothered to read what the lists are about,
so making the list names more clear might help to solve some of these
problems.

redhat-network-list might make a bit more sense and differentiate it
from a general users list. I dunno, though.

It's probably not do-able, but I think Mailman's "topics_enabled" Option
could help clean things up by requiring posts to have a keyword or 2 in
them. This would force people to maybe read the list information first?
However, I'm not sure it works with digest mode.

jef

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