[Caml-list] Newbie list

[Caml-list] Newbie list

[Frank Atanassow]

There have been a lot of beginner questions on this list of late and, though
there are still peaks and troughs, the traffic has increased noticeably. I
have no problems with beginners asking questions, and indeed I have answered
at least one such post myself at length, but I think perhaps the rest of us
might be better served if a separate list were established for them, say
`caml-newbie' or `caml-cafe'. `caml-list' would remain the default list for
announcements and general discussion.

Does anyone favor such a proposal?

-- 
Frank Atanassow, Information & Computing Sciences, Utrecht University
Padualaan 14, PO Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, Netherlands
Tel +31 (030) 253-3261 Fax +31 (030) 251-379
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Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Markus Mottl]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Frank Atanassow wrote:
> There have been a lot of beginner questions on this list of late and,
> though there are still peaks and troughs, the traffic has increased
> noticeably. I have no problems with beginners asking questions, and
> indeed I have answered at least one such post myself at length, but I
> think perhaps the rest of us might be better served if a separate list
> were established for them, say `caml-newbie' or `caml-cafe'. `caml-list'
> would remain the default list for announcements and general discussion.
> 
> Does anyone favor such a proposal?

A very difficult question indeed: if we do this, the advanced users may
find more time for productive development work, but who would answer
the newbies' questions then? OTOH, it might be very effective to let
the newbies teach themselves in a kind of "caml-cradle". Knowledge
(and lack thereof) is usually distributed so newbies are not unlikely
to solve most basic issues in cooperation.

Since I am always eager to experiment, it might be worth a try to create
special lists for special purposes (like teaching newbies). If things
don't work as intended, we can always merge the lists again.

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl                                             markus@oefai.at
Austrian Research Institute
for Artificial Intelligence                  http://www.oefai.at/~markus
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Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Alan Schmitt]

Hi,

We did this for the enlightenment lists, because some developers were
getting bothered with all the newbie questions, so we created an
enlightenment-users mailing list. This means that some developers, or
people who know a bit, subscribe to this list to answer questions. I
found out that subscribing to both list is fine, traffic has increased a
bit (newbies seem to be less frightened, and the people who subscribed
to the user list are ready to read faq, so they don't scare newbies away
;-), and the general impression is positive. The only requirement for
this to work is to ensure that some people who know about ocaml are
ready to subscribe and answer to questions.

Alan

* Markus Mottl (markus@mail4.ai.univie.ac.at) wrote:
> A very difficult question indeed: if we do this, the advanced users may
> find more time for productive development work, but who would answer
> the newbies' questions then? OTOH, it might be very effective to let
> the newbies teach themselves in a kind of "caml-cradle". Knowledge
> (and lack thereof) is usually distributed so newbies are not unlikely
> to solve most basic issues in cooperation.
> 
> Since I am always eager to experiment, it might be worth a try to create
> special lists for special purposes (like teaching newbies). If things
> don't work as intended, we can always merge the lists again.
> 
> Regards,
> Markus Mottl

--
The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool happen.
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Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Markus Mottl]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> We did this for the enlightenment lists, because some developers were
> getting bothered with all the newbie questions
[snip]

Your experience seems to indicate that we should try out creating a
specific list for newbies. It's probably to the better for all sides:
newbies won't be afraid of joining this list and asking "stupid" questions
(only unasked questions are stupid, IMHO), and more experienced developers
won't get distracted while discussing more hard-core issues.

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Frank Atanassow wrote:
> I might subscribe to the newbies list and answer questions myself. The
> reason I want a separate newbie list is that I can unsubscribe from it
> when I get busy without missing the other discussions and announcements.

Though I guess that many people use mail clients with threading
capabilities, it still seems better to have separate lists: this way one
could automatically sort mails from both lists into different folders
and thus prevent cluttering one's inbox (or caml-list inbox). When I
don't have time to answer basic questions, I'd simply not look at the
caml-newbie folder. It's difficult to resist, when all mails go to the
same folder (I am not very disciplined ;) ...

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl                                             markus@oefai.at
Austrian Research Institute
for Artificial Intelligence                  http://www.oefai.at/~markus
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RE: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Collin Monahan]

As a newbie my opinion is that I'd be more likely to post questions to a
second list than here with one list. Even though when I asked questions
before I felt quite welcomed.
Collin Monahan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr
[mailto:owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr] On Behalf Of Markus Mottl
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 11¤24
To: Alan Schmitt; Frank Atanassow
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list


On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> We did this for the enlightenment lists, because some developers were 
> getting bothered with all the newbie questions
[snip]

Your experience seems to indicate that we should try out creating a
specific list for newbies. It's probably to the better for all sides:
newbies won't be afraid of joining this list and asking "stupid"
questions (only unasked questions are stupid, IMHO), and more
experienced developers won't get distracted while discussing more
hard-core issues.

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Frank Atanassow wrote:
> I might subscribe to the newbies list and answer questions myself. The

> reason I want a separate newbie list is that I can unsubscribe from it

> when I get busy without missing the other discussions and 
> announcements.

Though I guess that many people use mail clients with threading
capabilities, it still seems better to have separate lists: this way one
could automatically sort mails from both lists into different folders
and thus prevent cluttering one's inbox (or caml-list inbox). When I
don't have time to answer basic questions, I'd simply not look at the
caml-newbie folder. It's difficult to resist, when all mails go to the
same folder (I am not very disciplined ;) ...

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl                                             markus@oefai.at
Austrian Research Institute
for Artificial Intelligence                  http://www.oefai.at/~markus
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[Caml-list] Newbie list

[Felix Terkhorn]

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Being a quasi-newbie also, I agree with this sentiment.  I enough people are out there who would not only benefit from being able to post less complex questions to such a list, but who have also had enough experience to answer a lot of such questions themselves.  Personally, about half the newbie questions posted here are ones I feel I might be likely to ask, and the other half are ones I feel I could answer.

It also wouldn't take a great number of developer-types to support this list, since a fair amount of the questions would probably be able to be answered by a single person who is very experienced in OCaml.  And there are obviously a lot of helpful people around here. :)

Just my two cents,
Felix Terkhorn

On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 12:29:04PM -0400, Collin Monahan wrote:
> 
> As a newbie my opinion is that I'd be more likely to post questions to a
> second list than here with one list. Even though when I asked questions
> before I felt quite welcomed.
> Collin Monahan
> 
*snip*

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 251 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Frank Atanassow]

Markus Mottl wrote (on 13-09-01 15:19 +0200):
> On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Frank Atanassow wrote:
> > There have been a lot of beginner questions on this list of late and,
> > though there are still peaks and troughs, the traffic has increased
> > noticeably. I have no problems with beginners asking questions, and
> > indeed I have answered at least one such post myself at length, but I
> > think perhaps the rest of us might be better served if a separate list
> > were established for them, say `caml-newbie' or `caml-cafe'. `caml-list'
> > would remain the default list for announcements and general discussion.
> > 
> > Does anyone favor such a proposal?
> 
> A very difficult question indeed: if we do this, the advanced users may
> find more time for productive development work, but who would answer
> the newbies' questions then? OTOH, it might be very effective to let
> the newbies teach themselves in a kind of "caml-cradle". Knowledge
> (and lack thereof) is usually distributed so newbies are not unlikely
> to solve most basic issues in cooperation.

I might subscribe to the newbies list and answer questions myself. The reason
I want a separate newbie list is that I can unsubscribe from it when I get
busy without missing the other discussions and announcements.

Also, I at least might be more inclined to answer newbie questions on a
separate list because such a list would be specifically set up for that
purpose. To be honest, I am a little uncomfortable posting such messages here,
because I know that for most, or at least many, subscribers they are
superfluous, and may be regarded as a nuisance.

Finally, newbie questions often get many similar replies, and partly because
of the delay between posting and bouncing, I don't know that my post won't be
redundant; on a newbie list I might be less worried about that.

-- 
Frank Atanassow, Information & Computing Sciences, Utrecht University
Padualaan 14, PO Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, Netherlands
Tel +31 (030) 253-3261 Fax +31 (030) 251-379
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Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Mike Leary]

caml-list and caml-dev would seem to be the traditional sort of split

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Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Alan Schmitt]

* Mike Leary (leary@nwlink.com) wrote:
> caml-list and caml-dev would seem to be the traditional sort of split
> 

Err ... I'm not so sure, because it would mean migrating all the
subscribed people to the caml-dev list, and they would need to modify
their filters and so on ...

I like caml-newbie, because it feels like it's not possible to ask
stupid questions ;-). Or caml-user could work too.

Alan

--
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Re: [Caml-list] Newbie list

[Sven]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 11:32:59AM -0700, Mike Leary wrote:
> caml-list and caml-dev would seem to be the traditional sort of split

I would have said :

caml-dev and caml-user (or -devel or -users).

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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