Shlomi Fish wrote: I'd also support merging the lists. I'm sure most linux-il subscribers are also subscribed to other mail lists which post a mix of new and advanced questions and answers. That is usually to everyone's benefit: The new users get accurate answers, and the group of more advanced users grows as new users, who enjoyed getting help when they needed, later enlist and start contributing answers when they have gained the experience.On Tuesday 17 February 2009 14:23:23 Dotan Cohen wrote:Compiling a Kernel was a new thing in 1995, when I started doing it. Now it's usually not necessary for the average user to do, and IMHO saying that you had to do it to access a device would scare away the average new user.As for writing a driver, it's not a noob thing, it's not even an "expert" thing. I expect that the number of people who have even read a driver's source code on this list could be counted on the fingers of one hand.Exactly. The distinction between noob and experienced posts is too blurry today to justify two lists. Especially when there is essentially _no_traffic_ on the noobs list (I subscribed yesterday and there have been no messages so far).There is indeed very little traffic on GNUbies-IL . I expect most new Linux users ask on web-forums instead of on mailing lists. I'm still a GNUbies-IL admin in case someone posts, and am subscribed there to answer any questions that people may have. I personally support accepting beginners' posts here on Linux-IL, assuming there will be any. I don't expect the added traffic to overwhelm Linux-IL, and it may lead to interesting more advanced or more philosophical discussions. Some beginners may be intimidated by the more advanced questions, but I doubt it will be an issue. In any case, maintaining GNUbies-IL is not time consuming at all, so I'm perfectly fine keeping it in its mostly-dormant condition. As to the annoyance of deleting uninteresting posts: this hits both new users (who have to delete "overly technical" questions) as well as advanced users (who chose to skip "overly simple" questions). --Regards, Shlomi Fish Regards, Micha |
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