Just to answer the aspect of why people in IRC tell you to go to a mailing list – because mailing list answers are more permanent that IRC, and also, it spreads the knowledge of the question, and the answer over a much wider time frame rather than just the two to three sentences that are involved in fixing your situation. It also notifies the mailing list which is generally watched by the devs/patchers/genius(is)/workaround guys/people from other distros/generally smart people – who could probably help you work through the problem, or at least direct you to a page that can.
These days people treat IRC like a street market for info, there are no rules other than do not paste more than 3 lines! (pastebin is your friend) and you can say what you like to who you like, and log off, without so much as contributing to the community. … At least by coming to the mailing list, or at least searching the archives, the effort that had previously been exerted to answer the question the first 20 times on the mailing list, will not be wasted.
IRC has been around for a long time, but unless the irc server is irc.(project domain name here).org then expect it to be staffed by volunteers and people who may not have the same focus as yourself. IRC is just one of a number of resources. It a good spot for instant relief, (think street hooker), but the mailing list is your wife!
*disclaimer* I do not advocate the use of street hookers, nor do I discriminate/have any negative feeling towards against those who do, or indeed are ☺ - I just wanted to make a point!
I think I made my point, all the resources are out there on the web, this is open source, we don’t pay for it, be glad with the system that has actually managed to evolve given the fact the only incentive has been to pass on knowledge.
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On Sun, 30 May 2010, Gabriel - IP Guys wrote:
Just to answer the aspect of why people in IRC tell you to go to a mailing list – because mailing list answers are more permanent that IRC, and also, it spreads the knowledge of the question, and the answer over a much wider time frame rather than just the two to three sentences that are involved in fixing your situation.
You omit mentioning that (from tracking latencies to appearing) the CentOS site, wiki, MLs, CentOS' planet are all regularly trawled by major search engines. The Forum and the bug tracker are also indexed but less often. So an answer there in these non ephemeral 'gateway into being readily re-findable ... thus some of the extended posts I make
These days people treat IRC like a street market for info, there are no rules other than do not paste more than 3 lines! (pastebin is your friend) and you can say what you like to who you like, and log off, without so much as contributing to the community
Drive-bys and externalities are a problem and under the old design the CentOS wiki was not such a pigsty; some other team members lobbied for a less OCD approach on what is in and off topic, and how 'spoon-feeding' was treated. The jury is still out on this new approach in my mind; I know I get push back from old-timers who preferred the higher signal to noise ratio, and want 'quality' back as a preferred metric over 'friendliness' ...
IRC has been around for a long time, but unless the irc server is irc.(project domain name here).org then expect it to be staffed by volunteers and people who may not have the same focus as yourself
The CentOS project has cloaks both for team members, and trusted sources in IRC nics to address the issue (think of the clerk at the local hardware store, wearing a distinctive over-vest to mark them ...) A quick: /whois (nick) <CR> can tell a lot
-- Russ herrold
R P Herrold wrote:
Drive-bys and externalities are a problem and under the old design the CentOS wiki was not such a pigsty; some other team members lobbied for a less OCD approach on what is in and off topic, and how 'spoon-feeding' was treated. The jury is still out on this new approach in my mind; I know I get push back from old-timers who preferred the higher signal to noise ratio, and want 'quality' back as a preferred metric over 'friendliness' ...
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?
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
R P Herrold 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]
I don't use IRC at all - and don't like real-time typing in general. Email seems much more civilized in terms of both giving you time to think before typing and being able to interleave with the rest of your life.
On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 8:22 AM, R P Herrold herrold@centos.org wrote:
You omit mentioning that (from tracking latencies to appearing) the CentOS site, wiki, MLs, CentOS' planet are all regularly trawled by major search engines. The Forum and the bug tracker are also indexed but less often.
Earlier last year, I noticed Google tended to pick up Forum posts than mailing list posts. To see if this was indeed the case, I searched for several terms in Google and compiled the results in my blog:
http://blog.toracat.org/2009/02/search-is-on-getting-help-for-centos/
Sure enough, Google seems to like Forums better than the MLs. :-P Because that search was getting rather old (15 months ago), I repeated the same set of search yesterday. And the update is here:
http://blog.toracat.org/2010/05/search-is-on-an-update/
Surprisingly, there were very few from the mailing lists in the first Google 50 hits. As I mentioned there, the objective of the search is not to compare which is more "popular" but simply to present the fact that, when people go to Google and do a simple search, they tend to see Forum posts. This in turn means we need to make sure there are no misleading or inappropriate answers. So, you can help there, too.
Akemi / toracat
On Sun, 30 May 2010, Akemi Yagi wrote:
Surprisingly, there were very few from the mailing lists in the first Google 50 hits. As I mentioned there, the objective of the search is not to compare which is more "popular" but simply to present the fact that, when people go to Google and do a simple search, they tend to see Forum posts. This in turn means we need to make sure there are no misleading or inappropriate answers. So, you can help there, too.
Interesting observation, but the forum content is additive, and so filled with blind alleys for a indexing engine that cannot distinguish supposition and mistake from authoritative content. Without the editor's pen to excise errors, we just have mass there; compare contra the wiki where there is at least the possibility of revision [What? R P Herrold liking some aspect of a wiki? Is there an impersonation?] and better (bug slower) feeding changes through the proper bug tracker [so that minor ephemeral edits to not get forgotten] into a long lived work (upstream 'man' and 'info' pages, the increasingly good upstream manuals)
Also I see a lot of 'boilerplate' in first responses in the forums adminishing people to read the instructions, and welcoming people which has the effect of increasing bulk but not adding light. I do not see merit in the fact that Google, for example, has 15000 hits for: "site:centos.org welcome to the CentOS fora" ... and it is not at all clear that this is the correct plural to anyone but a pedant with a bit of grammar school Latin willing to confuse non-native speakers of English
-- Russ herrold
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Akemi Yagi -
Gabriel - IP Guys -
Les Mikesell -
R P Herrold -
R P Herrold