[freeside-users] MAILING LIST POSTING GUIDELINES

ivan ivan at 420.am
Thu Dec 22 11:41:04 PST 2005


I'm going to try posting this every few months, since people don't seem 
to be following the instructions sent when they signed up for the list.  
I'd welcome contributions toward making these guidelines more clear and 
understandable; towards this end, I've put them in the Wiki at 
<http://www.sisd.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Mailing_List_Guidelines>.


--------------------
-----GUIDELINES-----
--------------------

BEFORE YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT POSTING TO THE LIST, READ ALL OF 
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>.  YES, THIS MEANS 
YOU!

In an effort to keep the noise level down, users are REQUIRED to do the 
following before posting questions or problems to the list:

- Report the exact Freeside version being used.  If you are using a 
  snapshot from CVS, report the date you pulled or updated that snapshot 
  and be aware you are testing and reporting problems in unreleased 
  development code.

- Report if Apache::ASP or HTML::Mason is being used, and the version 
  number.

- Verify that the software Freeside depends on (Apache, Perl, DBI, DBD, 
  the database engine, other Perl modules, etc.) are installed and 
  working.  Problems installing this software are outside the scope of 
  the list.

- Report the version of the OS, Perl, database engine, DBI and DBD.

- Report the exact error message, if any, and also the relevant contents 
  of Apache's error.log, if applicable.

YES, THIS MEANS YOU!  If you can't report ALL the information requested, 
don't bother posting your problem.


--------------------------------
-----EDITORIAL AND EXAMPLES-----
--------------------------------

I am too busy these days to give most mailing list messages about 
problems more than a quick skim.  If I'm looking at a message and it 
strikes me as being something specific to a particular Freeside version, 
or OS, or Perl or Pg version or whatever, and that information is 
missing, I'm not going to play twenty questions.  I'm not even going to 
reply and re-send you these guidelines anymore.  I'm most likely going 
to delete the message and ignore your future posts as well.


BAD:

  "I am using version 1.5.8 on a HP Proliant DL145 with 768 MB of RAM.  
  Apache 1.3.3 and Postgres 7.8."

  This poster barely provided any of the information requested, 
  provided irrelevant information not requested instead, reported 
  an unreleased version number that could indicate code anywhere from 
  yesterday to six months old, and reported a non-existant Postgres 
  version.  I am unlikely to give this message a second thought.  I'll 
  probably delete it and go skiing.


GOOD:

  "I am using version 1.5.8cvs pulled from CVS on 12/22/2005, on Debian 
  3.1.  I am using HTML::Mason 1.3101, Perl 5.8.7, PostgreSQL 7.4.8, DBI 
  1.48 and DBD::Pg 1.43."

  This poster took the time to read the guidelines and report the 
  requested information.  I am more likely to spend a few minutes of my 
  time looking at their problem rather than ignoring their message and 
  going skiing.  Unless its a powder day, in which case I'll ignore 
  everything anyway.  :)


-- 
_ivan


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