On Sun, 30 May 2010, Les Mikesell wrote:
What's a drive-by, and until a post is made and answered somewhere, how is a user supposed to know if a failure is caused by something local (mix of software, internet infrastructure), one repo mirror, or the basic infrastructure?
Lemme change hats
Dunno that I know your 'nick', Les, nor have seen contribution by you in #centos IRC. Is the CentOS' re-design on IRC a culture you understand via lurking a bit? [Clearly the earlier poster I trimmed down to respond to was not, as it clearly misstated some CentOS changes from 'bog standard' IRC practice]
First order answer:
A drive by is a person who pops into channel, does NOT read /topic, does NOT lurk for a minute or two, immediately asks a question fragment usually in 'l33t spe@k' or AOLbonics. They will re-ask it 15 seconds later when an answer is not immediately offered. If answered, it will turn out that there was some additional backstory such that the drive-by's queston was not well formed
Second order answer:
A 'serial' drive by is known by their 'nick' as such by the regulars who do the heavy listing in the change of adding substantive content, and as such, not treated as a priority to answer; Often we will see that 'nick' posting the same question as a cross-posting in parallel on several channels, or a referral to #centos from side projects of similar import or from forks (usually broken ones) unwilling to support their load, and so shifting it to us
-- Russ herrold