[Asterisk-Dev] RFC: Moderating the Asterisk Mailing Lists

[Bruno Hertz]

On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 14:19 -0600, Steven Critchfield wrote:

> I truly do get excited when I see someone learn. I have no tolerance for
> someone who expects to be spoon fed.

All right and well, but let me add a few points.

First, all those newbies are a bunch of free testers. More than you
currently like, I'm sure, and maybe not always meeting your standards,
but still - I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to have it the other way
round, i.e. persistently dead lists, including no interest whatsoever.

Next, a certain percentage of those newbies will generate business,
directly or indirectly for you too. So, feeding those newbies, even if
they don't contribute in the narrow sense you defined, is still an
investment which I'm pretty confident will pay off in the end in
whatever way you might desire, hard cash or happy users.

Finally, being new here, let me tell you that you people appear to be
stressed. Regarding the user list I pretty much understand why, with a
couple of hundred of mails per day which I'd really like to read and
respond to since a good share of them is really interesting, I'd feel
the same.

So, with all due respect, I gather what this project needs is a little
more success management. Maybe it requires more or better docs, like a
proper Howto or FAQ, or even better software which covers more standard
situations out of the box. Or it maybe the time to split the user list
according to protocols, hard- or softphones or whatever. You should
know.

But what I'm pretty much sure about is that you don't really want to
repel new users, even if a certain percentage of them appears to be
dumb.

My 2 cents.

Regards, Bruno.

PS: Someone mentioned his work on the Wiki here. I'd like to tell him
that he did/does a great job.