[cobalt-users] FAQ??? was Re: Cobalt user chatroom????

["Dave" <nuzman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> If, on the other hand, one chooses the lazy man's route and asks the
simple
> questions on the list, where people take the time to answer them over, and
> over, and over, three very bad things happen:
>
> 1.- The mailing list archives fill up with repeats of the same thing, and
> no new knowledge is added. Eventually the "knowledge base" is severely
damaged.
>
> 2.- People are not machines; they eventually get bored of answering the
> same damn thing ("what's port 111?") and simply quit answering. Thus the
> community is damaged.
>
> 3.- People learn less (those answering questions, those lurking on list,
> even the dude asking the question), and thus we all are injured.
>
> Lazyness is no excuse. Search the damned archives.

In the "Did anyone not notice" category... the footer added to each message
by the list software says absolutely nothing about the existence of any
archives, only the e-mail address and how to subscribe or unsubscribe.

Until every message that goes through the list mentions provides a link to
the archive, do you have a right to complain about people not searching the
archive before posting a question? While you're at it, add a link to the
knowledge base as well.

I joined this list a week ago because I'm considering purchasing a RaQ or
Qube (I do sysadmin work all day and don't want to deal with all of the
hassles on my own systems). I figured monitoring this list was a good way to
learn about these boxes.

One of the first things I looked for as a new subscriber was a FAQ ... maybe
I'm blind, but I can't find one. Every other technical list I subscribe to
has a FAQ that would stop much of the repeat "lame server" questions.

FYI, my search of the archives for FAQ failed to turn up a real product FAQ,
but I did discover you have a nasty habit of wasting space in the archives
complaining about "top posting" and other netiquette issues and have a
lovely FAQ for that purpose. I also discovered the following:

www.CobaltHosts.com
www.RaqResources.com
http://www.acns-online.com/chuck/topics/op/topicsView/tid/24/
http://www.uk2raq.com/raqfaq/ (raq3 specific)

Oh, don't expect Cobalt to produce a FAQ that goes beyond the scope of what
they designed the appliance to be... an appliance! If you want more than
that, create it yourselves.

Cheers!

Dave

p.s. I'm off to read more about these cute little boxes, so don't bother
flaming me for suggesting you're foolish to spend so much time complaining
about top posting.

(This account is a spam hole used for lists. Mail to it may not be read for
days or weeks at a time. My signature also contains only part of my real
name... and not the part I go by... if you know what you're doing, you can
find the real me with a couple of simple searches)