>>>>> "ohshima" == ohshima  <ohshima at is.titech.ac.jp> writes:

ohshima>   The fourth is who read only squeak-help.  This is my
ohshima> concern.  If he is new to Squeak and Smalltalk, how can
ohshima> he figure out what he is trying to post is advanced enough
ohshima> for "squeak mailing list" or not?  Or if he just knows there
ohshima> are two separated mailing lists, how can he figure out which
ohshima> mailing list he should subscribe?

Let us not forget the lesson of "comp.unix.questions" and
"comp.unix.wizards" as well.

For those of you that haven't been around Usenet for 19 years like
I have... <grin>

Originally, there was just a comp.unix.questions... and all sorts of
stuff got discussed there, from "how do I give more than one argument
to cat" to "the interrupt half of my device driver is leaking memory".

Eventually, the "wizards" got tired of seeing the questions about "cat",
and wanted to create a group where they would discuss heavy-duty
development questions amongst themselves.  (Sound familiar?)

So, we forked off a new group "comp.unix.wizards".  But, thanks to the
collective lack of intelligence on Usenet... a newbie would come along
and say "my question about cat is VERY difficult and I want an
*EXPERT* answer, not a beginner to answer.  Oh look, here's a place
where *EXPERTS* hang out" and then post immediately to
comp.unix.wizards.

So the experiment was a failure.  Any "expert" group is a lightning
rod for beginners.  We even posted FAQs that said "don't post here if
you want to *talk* to a wizard.  Post here if you *are* a wizard."
But that didn't help.  So the group had to be re-created as a
moderated group to filter out the beginners.

Just another guy trying to prevent repeating history,

-- 
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