<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">another advantage of forums is learning process for the noobs. Because people will have to go to the forums to answer people's questions, the simple googlable questions will be ignored and noobs will be forced to learn to search elsewhere. With a mail in the box, people tend to reply easily (and sometimes OT) to questions, and hence end up encouraging them to do the same thing next time they have a minor problem, not to mention spamming everybody with the same answer that was here a week ago.<br><br>-devsk<br><br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Original Message ----<br>From: devsk <funtoos@yahoo.com><br>To: Discussion about mythtv <mythtv-users@mythtv.org><br>Sent:
Monday, January 29, 2007 11:50:26 AM<br>Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Please shut up!<br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">I think fundamental reason for so much traffic is that there is no official good forum based central place for people to go to get some help. I can see if there was an official forum on mythtv.org, it would result in lot of network bandwidth saved for so many people. <br><br>advantage of having a forum is that not everybody gets an email in their box, you can subscribe to threads of your choice and keep them around in your box, you can search the abundance of information easily in one place, there can be more posts than you can send emails to the list (so, a little bit more frequency is absorbable because its not generating that much traffic), you can have better sub-forums like Installation, Suggestions for Hardware, OT,
Chat,
Announcements, Feature Requests, Submit Patches etc.<br><br><span>There is not-so-well-visited (compared to mythtv-users list, in terms of number of messages per day) forum about mythtv at <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.mythtvtalk.com">http://www.mythtvtalk.com</a> , but not official. Maybe a link to mythtvtalk.com is what needs to be put along with the mailing list info on the front page of mythtv. Or may be, we should have a forum at mythtv.org.</span><br><br>-devsk<br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Original Message ----<br>From: Yeechang Lee <ylee@pobox.com><br>To: MythTV user mailing list <mythtv-users@mythtv.org><br>Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007 10:33:38 PM<br>Subject: [mythtv-users] Please shut up!<br><br><div>This message is not going to make me popular. I don't care. It will<br>also be my only statement on the subject.<br><br>mythtv-users is way, way, way too busy. My
archive of digests
for the<br>first six months of 2006 contains 1110 digests, each averaging about<br>25 messages. That's 27,750 messages for those six months alone, or<br>about 152 a day (!). gossamer-threads.com says there have been 168,729<br>messages since the list started back in 2003 or so. This is an<br>almost-overwhelming volume for even a speedreader like me.<br><br>While many messages contain worthwhile questions on<br>previously-unanswered or inadequately-answered topics, and answers to<br>said questions, I see far, far, far too many that fall into at least<br>one of three camps:<br><br>1) Questions that have been covered over, over, over again on the<br> list, on the Wiki, in the FAQ, in Jarod's howto and other popular<br> resources, and elsewhere on the Internet. In some cases, questions<br> get asked mere days or hours after the question has been previously<br> and thoroughly dealt with.<br>2) Questions that don't contain the
information necessary for others to<br> help diagnose and solve the problem.<br>3) Questions that don't have anything to do with MythTV or, more<br> generally, using a computer to record and play back televisions at<br> all.<br><br>Two examples from today, 28 January 2007:<br><br>* A poster with 461 messages going back to February 2004 asked for<br> suggestions for inexpensive, S/PDIF-equipped, ALSA-friendly<br> soundcards. Never mind that asking the gossamer-threads.com search<br> engine for "sound card optical" pulls up as the very first result a<br> thread from April and May 2006 that answers this question with two<br> suggestions, one of them being the same card that gets recommended<br> pretty much every single time this question gets asked (about twice<br> a month), as the subsequent hits to the search query show.<br><br>* A poster with 1,225 messages
going back to December 2004 asked how<br> to SSH from work through a firewall. His message achieved the<br> dubious distinction of falling into all three of the above<br> categories:<br>3) because it was off topic (the poster, like so many others, believes<br> that putting "OT:" in the subject line somehow makes this magically<br> OK). Yes, he wanted to log into a MythTV system, but otherwise<br> there's absolutely nothing MythTV-specific about his question. If<br> he wanted to ask, there is no shortage of firewall-, security-, and<br> SSH-related newsgroups, forums, webboards, and listservs that are<br> more relevant.<br>2) because his message didn't contain enough information. There was no<br> indication of whether the workplace firewall blocks just port 22 or<br> SSH packets in general regardless of port. This very much impacts<br>
how he would solve his problem (unless the answer is "Get back to<br> work!").<br>1) because his message is very, very, very well-discussed elsewhere<br> already. Just asking Google "work firewall ssh" pulls up 1,300,000<br> hits, with (on the first page alone) the first and third hits<br> appearing to be promising.<br><br>Two suggestions, one to Isaac in his role as the list owner, and the<br>other to list members in general:<br><br>To Isaac: Point newcomers in their initial welcome message to<br>gossamer-threads.com, wiki.mythtv.org, wilsonet.com/mythtv/, and<br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInstallRequire">www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInstallRequire</a>. Have them read and<br>follow Yeechang Lee's[1] Two Rules of Posting<br>(<URL:<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"
href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/23dd66853fa24261?hl=en&">http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/23dd66853fa24261?hl=en&</a>;>):<br><br> (1) Read a [mailing list] for two weeks before posting to it.<br> (2) If you do not understand the reason for rule (1), make it a<br> month.<br><br>To list members: gossamer-threads.com, wiki.mythtv.org,<br>wilsonet.com/mythtv/, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInstall">www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInstall</a>, not<br>to mention the all-purpose google.com, can answer pretty much every<br>MythTV-related question you can think of and most you can't. If you<br>can't find the answer:<br><br>A) Wait a day or two. Seriously.<br>B) Try searching the above resources again.<br>C) If still unsuccessful, then--and only<br>then--send a message off to mythtv-users. Provide all the
relevant<br>information you can think of.<br>D) Wait. If no one responds, maybe you haven't done what C) advises<br> you to do. Wait longer.<br> D1) Don't "bump" your message; this is a mailing list, not a<br> webboard for The OC fans discussing whether Ryan/Marissa or<br> Ryan/Taylor is the better couple.[2]<br> D2) If using GMail, understand how it treats your own messages to<br> lists.<br>E) If still no answer, follow steps A) and B) again.<br>F) Ask again, this time rephrased and with as much additional<br> information you've gleaned in the meanwhile.<br><br>I am not a developer. I don't work "in IT." I am not a database<br>administrator. My knowledge of SQL is limited to the few lines in<br>Jarod's MythTV howto. I am not a professional sysadmin. I do not have<br>the letters RHCE, CNE, or MCSE after my name.[3]<br><br>How is it, then, that my 1920x1080p, Bob-deinterlacing,
working<br>MythWeb-graced, custom modeline-using, auto-transcoding, FireWire- and<br>ATSC-supplied, RAID 6-storing, optical surround-sound, wireless remote<br>control- and keyboard-equipped MythTV system filled with 39 days and<br>13 minutes of almost-entirely high-definition MPEG-2 recordings works,<br>and has worked ridonkulously well[4] since day two or three of the<br>start of my MythTV adventures almost fourteen months ago, while<br>mythtv-users sees a constant influx of people--many, if not most,<br>answering to one of the above job descriptions--who can't get past the<br>first or second step? I can only believe that it is because I learned<br>a long, long, long time ago how to apply steps A-F in just about<br>everything I do in life, whether MythTV-related or not.<br><br>[1] Yes, I am the author of these rules. They are more than a decade<br>old. However, their real author is that prophet so often without honor<br>in his own country, Mr. Com N.
Sense.<br><br>[2] Ryan/Taylor, of course, as anyone who's seen season 4 can tell<br>you.<br><br>[3] I work in investment banking, and not on the IT side. I deal all<br>day with P/E ratios and non-GAAP EPS and financial statements and DCFs<br>and target prices all day. I studied history and Spanish at<br>college. Other than AP Computer Science in high school and a<br>one-credit class in Java at college, I am entirely self-taught<br>computerwise.<br><br>[4] See any of the 354 message--the majority containing answers to<br>peoples' questions as opposed to new questions--I've contributed to<br>mythtv-users over the past 14 months, such as<br><URL:<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/233570#233570">http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/233570#233570</a>>.<br>Also see<br><URL:<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"
href="http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193371&cid=15864227">http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193371&cid=15864227</a>><br>and<br><URL:<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196155&cid=16072190">http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196155&cid=16072190</a>>.<br><br>-- <br>Yeechang Lee <ylee@pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US<br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br>mythtv-users@mythtv.org<br><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br></div></div><br></div></div><br>
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