[cobalt-users] Attention List users....

["Zeffie" <cobaltlist@xxxxxxxx>]

Now that I have Everybody's attention.....

The recent events have caused me to re-evaluate trying to help others to
learn and become more successful with their business. So I will expand on a
few issues in hopes of clearing the air and making change.

Common:
We all have too much mail.
We all have Cobalt products..
We all have better things to do then read this list

General Apology:
As with any war sometimes innocent people get hurt in one way or another.  I
am truly sorry for hurting in any way, any innocent person that was affected
by my actions.

Onlist flames:
I was taught some time back (on this list) onlist stays onlist and offlist
stays offlist.
With all the on and offlist insults I have now taken I will mention only one
name here... Dan Kriwitsky. This person is the only one that I will never
forget or help directly again.

Spam:
On this we need to be somewhat aggressive so that the list does not become
the target of every person that writes a Perl script.  I think if someone
creates a free package, and or contributes to the list they should be
permitted to post updates and they should have a place in the currently
non-existent User list depository...  Regardless they should at least be
cobalt specific.

I think we see a few Spams a month and someone should make a complaint to a
list of places determined and maintained by us the users and the only post
that should be added to the thread is "Reported via our list of places to
report"  We don't need to talk about each and every one.

Why I did this:
A chain of events over the last few years has caused me to re-evaluate what
I want to do in life.  I decided some time ago that I wanted to do something
to help as many people as I could.  This list seemed like the place I could
do just that.  I am currently unemployed or self employed and I'm not really
making anything to support myself.  I decided a few weeks back that I would
try to make this list the "receiver" of the help I can give and God willing
I would be able to provide of myself.

Everyday I wake up and check my server and start answering mail or I work on
projects of interest like Redhat, Debian, new and old packages.  If I'm
lucky I get to eat 1 small meal during the day.  Then I go to bed....  I do
get out to the country sometimes and there I work for free for another close
friend.  It allows me to do some hard physical labor and blow up butane cans
in the fire pit. I really enjoy the work as I have always been a hard
worker.

When I get behind in reading the posts I will often spend my weekend reading
all the posts...  The last time I tried to do this with a small amount of
posts (1426) I got disgusted by all the "OT's" I saw and found the batch was
a waste of time to read... I put them in a new unread folder and marked them
all read and I went to the country :)

I came back to the list and the OT posts declined right away... I was
surprised by this....  So I decided I would make my own noise to read and
try and drive home a few things...  After I started to go full speed at
posting answers.  I added a few "noise" posts in hopes it would make a
dent....  I was then attacked right and left.  I might add that many of the
posts where very public and very insulting.


Professional forum:
****With a small few people excluded****
Few of you have acted like professionals
None of you has made a free package for others.
None of you have created one little bit of html on the web of your own work.
Most of you are part time webmasters.
The Responses I have gotten for posting answers are not professional....

How many times do we have to post back things like...
Read the manual on page X
What's the domain name?
What's the ip number?
How many ip's do you have?
What is that software?
What is the error message?
What do you have in some box in your gui?
What is a link to that software?
What is the output of ps -aux
What product do you have?
What does the top of top look like?
What is the output of /sbin/ifconfig?
Did you do your updates?
Did your problems occur after you did the updates...
Have you checked your messages?

How many times do we hear!
Thanks "Whoever"
I'm selling my whatever
Go Search the archives
That's the active monitor
Is the current update safe to do?
Read this "Clue" in the archives

Do we have any room on the Cobalt site.... NO!
And why?  Because this list has nothing to put on it....
(Not to be confused with individual works)
No Faq's
No How To's
No Packages
No Resources
No Links page
No Developers
No Content Period
We are Nothing more then a bathroom wall.

It would be nice to ask cobalt to supply a Raq for this users group using
the cobalt name but think about it?  If you where a business would you want
this list and it's chat content to become public???  They don't make it
public now because it must be almost embarrassing to them.  I wouldn't do
anything like "creating a better way to search the archives?"  Would You?
For your business?  I would rather not have my customers get poor or
miss-information.  Ask yourself... What would you do?

This isn't a professional forum its a Chat room!  At the moment this is a
dysfunctional chat room at best.  I am a professional.... I live, eat, and
sleep this stuff and have for over 20 years.

So here are some things for you folks to decide
Do you really want all this chat or do you want some resources?
Would you like a list of user created programs and packages?
Would you like a area where we can declare packages as safe?
Would you like a area that contains information for your questions?
Would you like to develop a site with information for newbies?
Would you like to improve Your Cobalt experience?

We are the only ones that can make something out of this list
I can do the some of the work but I can't do it without the support of the
list members here.  I now find myself needing to make a decision as to where
my efforts best lie.  I have to make a choice.

I see some fine people on this list with varying areas of expertise.
Together we can make this list and the materials produced something we can
be proud of and that coblat could begin to consider supporting more then
they are now.  We can do it if we work together and make some standards and
take control of this...  this mess.

Now I'm asking you to make a choice.
Both gif's are the same.
Vote yes if you want more from this list
http://vote.zeffie.com/yes.gif
Vote no if you don't and you think I should go away.
http://vote.zeffie.com/no.gif

The stats will be at http://vote.zeffie.com/stats/

Zeffie
I do this for "brain candy" and to help people.  Not because I have too....