Re: a rose by any other name

On Sat, May 10, 2003 at 11:03:39AM -0700, Craig Groeschel wrote:
> All the off-topic messages are a minor annoyance to me and not
> a huge deal, but here are some options I can think of to deal
> with them, or not.
> 
> * status quo, do nothing
> * intensify the name of the list, change it to "advocacy" or
> something similar (If this were a newsgroup, what would its
> name be?)
> * swap purposes with [email protected], nobody ever uses that
> one anyway
> * close it down because there are off-topic msgs
> * close it down since the initial burst of activity is over
> 

Ok, ...

As you may have noticed, i did a little inquiry regarding the people who
did write to the list with support questions. Not all of them responded
(only 3 or 4), and it seems they all got to the list trough google, or
so and choose what seemed the more adequate for them.

Ideas to make it better are :

  o Make the [email protected] mailing list more visible in :

    http://www.xfree86.org/mailman/listinfo

    Possibly by moving this list to be the first one, or having a first
    paragraph in the page that say, use list [email protected] for
    support questions or such.

  o Add a 'Get Help' link in the top level content. (Already
    implemented) so that people don't wander around searching for help.

    Notice that :

    http://www.xfree86.org/ and http://www.xfree86.org/help.html

    Are now top two hit for a google search for "xfree86 help", which
    may improve things.

  o Other feeling i had with discussing this problem with the few people
    who responded, especially from the french guys, is that they had the
    impression that the list was xfree86 (xfree86.org) and thus wrote to
    the forum at xfree86, or something such.

Anyway, i don't really know, we will know with time if it has helped,
but my guess is that the already implemented 'Get Help' and the fact
that google will now fall on these links easily will be a great tool to
minimize the number of off-topic lists.

That said, a search for "xfree86 support" will yield the toplevel page
and http://www.xfree86.org/support.html, which only has a link to the
mailing lists. Maybe adding a link to the getting help there and on top
of the mailing list page would be an additional precaution, but maybe it
is too much, i don't know.

Also, maybe there are other search strings that are commonly used for
support question and xfree86, and we should look for them.

Anyway, i will continue responding to the misguided support seeking
users, so it is not needfull for other to do the same, and also notice
that at least one of these misguided users recomended me that i ask you
all to be a little less rude to these misguided posts.

Hope this helps some.

Friendly,

Sven Luther