[nycbug-talk] thoughts, issues, and ideas.

[Sunny Dubey]

On Monday 24 January 2005 10:06, steve wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> hope you had a safe commute

almost 8 hours through the snow-storm saturday nite ...

> another list i belong to is the nylug, which in my opinion (and i hope i
> do not infuriate anybody here) is more of a meeting place for people
> that like, know about, admin, or otherwise are involved with linux in
> general. it is not a place that i would go to for in-depth technical
> questions, which is a shame, because there are some great minds there.
>

No offense as been taken

[...]

> when i do try to bring up a technical question the responses are
> negligible, for the php question i think i got 4 responses and one was
> that i should asks the folks over at nyphp group. when i asked the
> apache question i also got 5 responses, yet only two answered my
> question. the other three, one told me to go elsewhere because they
> might better answer my question, the next one told me that openbsd froze
> their apache at 1.3.29 for license reasons. all i wanted was to start a
> discussion that would involve the members of this group, and i was
> looking for personal opinions, you the people of this group are
> technically astute, and most if not all have apache running in some
> form, why cant we just have a technical discussion where we point out
> what worked for us and what we recommend. i can (just as well as you)
> read all about apache on various pages, but the thing that makes this
> field, (meaning unix, bsd, and linux) different is that we share what we
> learned the hard way with one another.
>

I think it is somewhat important to realize what a " * User Group" is.  These 
groups are essentially pot-luck dinners.  A few people take their time to 
organize and hold the dinner, and everyone else just brings what they're good 
at to the table.

That being said you aren't going to find a whole lot of concentration on a 
particularly specific subject at any given time.  IE:  I've compiled PHP many 
different times, and the only thing I know about it is that the more options 
I enable, the more difficult my upgrade strategy might be.  Clearly I'm not 
qualified to talk about PHP compilation arguments so the most I could do is 
point you to a group of people that do know and are willing to answer 
questions for you.

However, if you asked a question about DS3 cards, then you just got lucky 
because folks like Alex may take the time to answer such a question

With any near-"general purpose" user group, it becomes hit or miss

>   i would like to propose that we create a separate mailing list called
> bsdmanagers, and take the rules that are applied to the other purely
> technical mailing lists, namely only technically bsd related question
> are allowed. and if i ask a question about my php on bsd, i wont get
> told to go to a different group to ask that question. i would like to
> see the nycbug lists become world renowned for technical questions and
> answers for anything that involves the bsd world. and if you dont know
> or dont want ot answer then dont.

the problem with such a list is that there are people who will use such a list 
as free tech-support/consulting.  The leechers will come en masse.  And 
somehow, you need to give motivation to those who answer questions.

Sunny Dubey

PS:  I looked at the January archive of the Sun Managers list, and I wasn't 
entirely impressed.  I saw lots of questions and even fewer responses.