[Mailman-Users] Banner and Complex code in header and footer

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:50 PM +0100 2004-08-16, PeteBell wrote:

>                                                                I think
>  that some of the answers given to new inexperienced users are quite
>  rude and short-tempered - especially considering that many of us are
>  not programmers and find Mailman a very complex subject.

	I'm not a programmer, either.  If you want the list for 
programmers, that would be mailman-developers, not mailman-users.

>                                                           Often answers
>  are NOT easy to find in the archives, especially when the questions
>  are sometimes difficult to phrase!

	The problem is that many users are obviously just not reading the 
FAQ, or making any attempt to search the FAQ or the archives.  Just 
giving them the answer encourages them to come back and use me (or 
someone else) as a FAQ search engine yet once again.  They need to be 
given encouragement to go find the answers themselves.

	They need to be told that the answer is in the FAQ, and that if 
they had searched the FAQ, they would have found the answer, and been 
able to avoid bothering all the rest of us.

	Otherwise, there is no use for the FAQ or the archives, and we 
should just delete them because they are a waste of space.


	This is the classic "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a 
day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".  These 
people need to learn to fish.

>  Thank you for listening. Sometimes the old "count to ten" principle
>  wouldn't hurt.

	Counting to ten wouldn't help if the original poster doesn't 
bother to search the FAQ or the archives, and yet the answer is 
easily found there.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.