[comp.lang.c] on comp.lang.c

scs@adam.mit.edu (Steve Summit) (06/03/91)

In article <4524@inews.intel.com> bhoughto@hopi.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>>In article <16307@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>[...unfortunate but not unexpected admission that he is leaving...]
>
>Doug's being his usual, overreactive self.  He just can't
>bear to send a little email pointing to the FAQ or even
>a copy of it...

Why is leaving a newsgroup because one doesn't find it valuable
an "overreaction"?

The problem is not that it takes X amount of time to send out
replies to simple questions; the problem is that there is such an
escalation of mindless or uninformed babble that there's nothing
left to interest the more experienced contributors.

I haven't been participating much, myself, lately, because
there's hardly anything interesting going on.  I've probably been
following comp.lang.c for less than half the time Doug has, and
I'm getting fed up -- I don't know how he's been able to put up
with it for so long.  Sure, it only takes a few minutes per day
to scan the Subject: lines, but when there's nothing new being
discussed, or even any interesting questions to answer, why
bother?

To me, a good indicator of the vitality and interest level of a
group is the percentage of Subject: lines *without* "Re:" on
them.  That percentage has been very, very low for comp.lang.c
lately.

This article won't reach the people it needs to reach most --
and that's the problem; no article can.  The primary problem is
people who learned about news yesterday and are posting today,
and there's not much that can be done to reach them before they
start posting.  However, the secondary -- and, in some ways,
bigger -- problem is all the followups from all the people who
have been reading for at least a few months and who ought to know
better.

[Segue into previously-written but never posted comp.unix.wizards
meta-article...]

The innocent questions are not going to go away.  If there were
*daily* welcome messages and guidelines documents and FAQ lists,
silly questions would still get through.  If anything, these
questions are going to get more frequent as net readership
continues to grow.  So we have to work on the repercussions, and
that ought to be a more manageable problem, because the people
posting followups are at least a little bit more likely to have
been reading for a few weeks, and to have seen some of the
guidelines or FAQ postings.

Remember: before you post, THINK.  If a question is so trivial
that thousands of people surely know the answer, mail your answer
rather than posting -- otherwise you'll be one of the thousands
who do post redundant answers.

If you're posting a question *or* an answer to a question *or* a
comment on or "correction" of some other article, make sure that
you know what the relevant FAQ list covers and that your question/
answer/comment isn't on it.  It's as important -- if not *more*
important -- not to post frequently-posted answers.  (It's
obviously especially important not to post wrong answers, so if
you're not sure, don't post.  Why begin an article with "I'm not
sure, but it seems to me that..." or "I haven't tested this code,
but it should work..."?  If you're not sure, wait until a
question comes along that you can answer.)

Once a question is on an FAQ list, you simply don't have to
answer it if it comes up.  Don't worry about the person asking
it: even if no one mails an answer, within a few weeks the FAQ
list will come by again.  I don't think we need to guarantee a
speedy answer to people who unwittingly ask questions that the
FAQ list they didn't read does answer.

Besides which, there is a sophisticated, distributed, intelligent
mailserver now operating netwide.  This server is able to
translate questions such as "Where can I find a Fortran-to-C
translater" and misstatements such as "all pointers are the same
size", no matter how they are worded, and no matter how clouded
the meaning, into the equivalent "Please send me a copy of the
FAQ list."

                                            Steve Summit
                                            scs@adam.mit.edu

P.S. The second and third paragraphs of this article are going to
inspire some nitwit to complain that "comp.lang.c isn't
guaranteed to be interesting to you; get off your high horse and
quit whining; these `interminable' discussions you're complaining
about are perfectly interesting to the rest of us."  Save it.  Of
course comp.lang.c isn't guaranteed to be interesting to me, and
if and when it becomes too uninteresting to bear, I'll leave,
with no complaint.