cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) (08/04/89)
In article <43728@bbn.COM> cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) writes: >There is a problem: it is VERY >hard for newcomers to pick up all the lore, abbreviations, conventions, etc >that are the underpinnings of making this whole exercise more-or-less work. >Now, net.announce.newusers is a wonderful thing, but it suffers from two >problems: * on almost every site it is almost always empty (due to problems > with the expiration of the messages.. this is not the place to > discuss THAT problem and why it prevails, only to observe that it > is true) > * As good as those postings are, they cannot actually answer EVERY > qustion a newcomer might have... having an interactive advisor is > clearly necessary and useful. Excellent analysis: *clearly news is not the best way to distribute the n.a.newuser packets*! If n.n.q was moderated, the moderator could act as a manual file server. An actual server could be set up, but that begs the question: how does a novice know to get to the server? What is needed is an obvious way to get help, i.e. a newsgroup to post to. Other topics that should be addressed in newuser docs for automatic distribution: How to work uuen/decode/zoo How to work ftp Where the primary archive locations are etc. Just my 2 cents. -- O----------------------------------------------------------------------> | Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large | Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .