[H-GEN] request for comments: beginners list

Greg Black gjb at yaxom.com
Mon Apr 7 03:55:42 EDT 2008


On 2008-04-07, Clinton Roy wrote:

> What do people think about having a beginners humbug mailing list?
> 
> It would be targeted at newbies, everyone would have be to be extra
> patient, and extra nice; no question would be too dumb.
> 
> Who would be interested in using such a list? Who would be interested
> in being a helper on such a list?

It's always difficult to predict whether a list will succeed and often
it doesn't work to fragment a small audience into multiple lists.  On
the other hand, since the cost of setting up such a list is negligible
and there is a non-zero probability that it might be useful, why not
just go ahead and set it up, announce it on the announce list, the web
page and at meetings and see what happens?

If it turns out to serve no purpose (such as the dsig list), then it can
die quietly; but if people do use it to ask questions that they don't
ask on the other lists, then it's a great idea.

I'm certainly happy to be a helper if the list is started.

Greg





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