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Re: TULK
For those who don't like reading through all this thread, here is a quick
summary of my reply:
1. newsgroups have their advantages and disadvanages.
2. You don't have to post to use them. Just search the archives (dejanews).
Your question is almost guaranteed to be there already.
3. newsgroups complement standard documents.
4. Searching Linux information should start from a single location (no
seperate HOWTOs, docs, man pages, etc.)
On Thu, 19 Nov 1998 04:06:39 +0200, Eran Tromer <eran@tromer.org> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Udi Finkelstein wrote:
You don't need to CC me separately if you post a reply to Linux-IL.
You have written a very long (and thought out) article, so excuse me for my
relatively short answer. It's only because you have seemed to summarize evry
well almost everything that can be said on the subject.
>Discussion systems such as newsgroups, mailing lists and bulletin boards
>are a great thing. After all, brains are by far the best storage and
>retrieval facility, especially /other/ people's brains...
>
>However, I don't believe posting to discussion systems are a general
>solution. To
>list a few problems:
>1. Latency
> It usually takes a few hours, sometimes even days, to get a
> relevant answer. Not satisfied? Another round will take you
> the same time.
Who was talking about actually POSTING a question? 99% of my questions have
been answered in the past by questions people have asked before. This is what
www.dejanews.com is used for.
I let others do the post. I stick to reading. I only post if my question is so
cpecific I can't seem to find an answer in the archives. In 90% of the cases,
the archives are enough.
As an example, I still see, each time a new RedHat version is released, 2-3
newbie questions about Sony CDU-31A/33A support (it's not recognized without
special manually entered kernal options). These questions has been answered
dozens of times in the past - people can search the archives, and find the
answer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would suggest this as a rule of thumb to all linux-il questioners. Before
you ask, check (by searhcing the archives) if your question was already asked
in one of the linux newsgroups, BEFORE YOU POST IT TO THE LIST (unless it
pertains more to the IL part of LINUX-IL!).
IS THIS IN THE LINUX-IL FAQ ???
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>2. Scalability
...
>3. Global Efficiency
...
>4. Access
...
right.
>Alas, discussion archives too are not a replacement for a well-edited,
>"authoritative" (in the sense I used in TULK) database. To list a few
>drawbacks:
I never claimed them to be.
>1. Signal-to-noise ratio is usually poor, and often horrendous.
right.
>2. Related to the above, discussion posts are significantly less
...
right.
>3. When you reach an post, it often doesn't contain enough context
...
right.
>4. In paractice, there are some serious problems with searching
> discussion archives. Usenet is fine, but if you want to search
> mailing lists or discussion boards, you must learn of their existence
> first, and search each separately. This problem is especially
> significant when conducting unfocused searches, orfor new users.
> In fact, many mailing lists don't even have search facilities!
right, but 99.9% of the questions are mentioned in comp.os.linux.*.
Also, www.referece.com archives mailing lists as well.
>5. Discussion board postings usually contain few outside links,
> such as canonical or related references. This makes it hard to
> get context, or to navigate around in problem-space when someone's
> /almost/ talking about your problem.
right.
>To my view, raw discussion archives are only a fallback strategy if you
>don't find your answer elsewhere. They /may/ contain your answer, but
>the effort in finding it is much higher.
right.
>Discussion sytems do raise an interesting possibility, though:
>Harvesting useful information, editing it into self-contained texts and
>adding them to the knowledgebase. Imagine keen newsgroup harvesters
>intent on their work (or just the occasional mailing list reader)
>finding an informative post, providing some context to replace the
>quotations, and promptly submitting the result.
forget it, it's impractical. As we have said, the strenge of discussion forums
such as usenet and mailing list, is their quick response and sheer volume
almost guaranteed to cover your specific problem by someone else.
You can't harverst this type of information by automatic tools, and volunteers
would be swaped by the sheer volume. it's much more effective to use these
volunteers to write new documents in the first place.
>If you recall, the conclusion of my article
>(http://www.forum2.org/eran/tulk/) envisions building a system that
>makes bazaar-style documentation possible. Discussion harvesing could be
>a significant factor in this.
>
>
>> Besides, a quick-n-dirty solution is still a keyword based full text
>> search engine, indexing all your main-pages, HOWTO's, and /usr/doc/*
>> can be built much quicker than the long term solution you suggest.
>
>Granted, it's much quicker to achieve, and probably worth doing as a
>stopgap measure. But:
>* Such a search often yields dozens of irrelevant entries when searching
>for some simple command. This will get increasingly worse.
That's why it's quick and dirty. it does 90% of the work 90% of the time.
>* man pages are usually at the quick-reference level. To learn something
>in the first place you need to either go buy a book, or learn by trial
>and error (which /we/ may prefer, but most people don't).
right. That's what all the linux guides (installation, administration,
networking, redhat manuals, etc.) are good at.
>* The scope of man pages is mostly limited to things after which you
>press Enter or put a ";". To get even something as elementary as an RFC,
>you need to on-line.
>* HOWTOs are great; there should be more of them; the LDP already uses
>SGML.
HOWTOs are ad-hoc solutions. I would like to see some general framework
linking HOWTOs together.
This reminds me the division between the web search engines vs. the web
directories. Linux has the web keyword search model (by using dejanews), but
lacks the web directory model, where a Linux user can get information by
starting from a SINGLE STARTING POINT, descending down a tree until it finds
the relevant information.
With the current model, when I have a problem and want to use the
documentation, I have to *know* about: HOWTOs, mini-HOWTOs, man pages, and the
big documents (guides). Also, man pages answer question such as "what does X
do?", but not "who does X?" type questions.
Since you have mentioned it before, then yes, MSDN is a good model. You begin
at a tree root, coverting everything from all the M$ SDK/DDK documentation,
compiler documentation. (Even though the tree has some information under
non-obvious branches, requiring the use of the search facility for locating
such information).
Udi
- References:
- TULK
- From: Eran Tromer <eran@tromer.org>
- Re: TULK
- From: udif@usa.net (Udi Finkelstein)
- Re: TULK
- From: Eran Tromer <eran@tromer.org>