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Re: Departing from linux-il list



On Tue, 27 Aug 1996, Rani Pinchuk wrote:

> What are the objectives of linux-il? 

Which brings us to a very important issue that may not appear in the FAQ 
and may have been forgotten by the list members. When several Israeli 
Linux users joined together, after Harvey's post to il.board about Linux 
users in Israel some two years back, the original charter for the linux-il 
list at Hagiga (the first original thread, daeling with what this list 
shoul talk about), concluded that the linux-il list should be a place for 
discussion of Israeli and Hebrew specific Linux-related subjects. What 
was agreed was that things like questions about Hebrew software, Linux 
meetings and installation parties, vendors in Israel etc. are IN. 
Questions regarding 'how do I set up the driver for my acme vacumatic 
with 3 TB of DRAM' belong to comp.os.linux.*, the linux mailing lists, 
and other international forums because they are not specific to Israel. 
These kinds of things, it was decided, were OUT.

With time, Israeli newbies joined the forum, and looked for answers to 
technical questions because the competent members on this list could 
supply them. People on the list asked technical questions because such 
questiones would be answered in a friendly forum, by people we all know, 
rather than by people in Finland we can't phone and ask for step by step 
handholding. Some international subscribers joined as well, to take 
advantage of this concentration of expertise. This resulted in the list 
changing a bit of it's character to include technical questions as well, 
although those questions were outside of the original intent of the 
founding members.

Up to now, anyoew who was on the list back during those good old days can 
correct me if I forgot something or if my memory has some serious parity 
errors.

This is to explain why, when people come with tough technical questions 
the manuals can't address, the gurus on the list take the guts out of the 
problem, with screwdrivers between their teeth and sparkles in their 
eyes. They enjoy it, although, stricktly speaking, those things shouldn't 
be on the list. When people come with newbie questions, which could have 
been addressed to appropriate forums, which could have been solved by the 
different docs, and which all the gurus are tired of answering, the 
linux-il veterans feel that they're not on the list for these questions, 
that the questions are out of charter, and that the poster should be 
marced. 

It is also acceptable - net wide - that all available documentation and 
all private support should be exhausted before a query is made public. 
This is what newbies should be aware of, and this is why we have Marc on 
this list. I do not approve of the means Marc uses to get this point 
through, but I do approve of the ends he's trying to meet.

Let the flame wars begin.

Regards,
Ariel

--
Ariel Nowersztern            Systems Programmer          reln@cs.huji.ac.il
Finger for GCode v3.1             Check out http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~reln/
"The best way to keep one's word is not to give it."  -- Napoleon Bonaparte


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