>>>>> "Kendall" == Kendall P Bullen <kendall@lists.tax.org> writes:
Kendall> On 7 Apr 1997, Dewey M. Sasser wrote:
>> The above policy would make it impossible to tell if the
>> question has been answered, resulting in several people taking
>> the time to send the same answer, probably *increasing* the
>> rate of Guru burnout.
Kendall> People do that anyway -- few people (in mailing lists
Kendall> *or* Usenet news) look to see if there are already
Kendall> responses. Why don't people burn out quicker in this
Kendall> other list?
I look. Certainly in the case of a "how do I restrict posts to list
members" question most everyone on the mj-users mailing list *could*
answer the question (RTFM!) if it has not already been answered. I
don't answer posts like that because I know that either Dave or Jason
has immediately jumped on it, and odds are they already have a reply
into SMTP while I'm just reading the question. Often I get the
question and reply in the same mail check.
Actually, Dave and Jason (and others) might want to be a bit slower to
answer questions like that. Note that I'm not (not, Not, NOT) saying
I don't appreciate them. I appreciate them *so much* that I want them
to avoid Guru burn-out.
I can't speak to why people don't burn out on that other list. I can
hypothesize (OK, I can pull a guess out of thin air) that people
disciplined enough to self-moderate in the way described don't tend to
get the same, simple, documented, RTFM type questions over and over.
Of course, rather than sit here and go back and forth on "it works",
"it doesn't work", the best thing to do would be to try it. If indeed
it does work, I'm all for it.
And now back to our regularly scheduled majordomo discussion, or
should we create a "majordomo-users-users" list for this discussion :-?
--
Dewey M. Sasser voice: (617) 494-6000
dewey@newvision.com PGP Key from public servers
PGP mail preferred.
---
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy
-- John Christian Falkenberg
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