Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 10:39:06 -0300 (ADT)
From: "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>
To: Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>
cc: Greg Smith <greg@2ndquadrant.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
	jd@commandprompt.com, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>,
	Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>,
	Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>,
	Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>,
	pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: List traffic
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	<4913.1273790764@sss.pgh.pa.us> <4BECC5E5.1000901@2ndquadrant.com>
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On Fri, 14 May 2010, Greg Stark wrote:

> On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Greg Smith <greg@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
>> Is it
>> helpful to novices that they can subscribe to a list when they won't be
>> overwhelmed by traffic, and can ask questions without being too concerned
>> about being harassed for being newbies?  Probably.
>
> Only if they aren't hoping to get answers... What percentage of the
> hackers and experts who trawl -general for questions to answer are
> subscribed to -novices?
>
> -general isn't subscriber-only posts is it?

All our lists are, yes ... *but* ... the 'subscriber list' is cross list, 
in that if you are subscribed to one, you can post to all ...

> If they're interested in performance topics and they're not subscribed
> to -general then they're missing *most* of what they're interested in
> which doesn't take place on -performance. And most of what's on
> -performance ends up being non-performance related questions anyways.

And IMHO, that is as much a fault of the 'old timers' on the lists as the 
newbies ... if nobody redirects / loosely enforces the mandates of the 
various lists, newbies aren't going to learn to post to more 
appropriate ones ...

Personally, my experience with large lists is that if there is a smaller, 
more focused list, I'll post there first, to avoid being lost in the noise 
... and, I will re-post to a more general list *if* and only if I'm unable 
to get an answer from where I posted my original ...

----
Marc G. Fournier                        Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A.
scrappy@hub.org                                     http://www.hub.org

Yahoo:yscrappy    Skype: hub.org    ICQ:7615664    MSN:scrappy@hub.org