On Sun, 7 Sep 1997, Allen Dick wrote:
>partially insulated from the same old amateur Q & A, however the level of
>discussion on BEE-L has now tended to decline to newbie level.
 
Speaking as newbie, I think *everyone* asked the same old amateur
questions when they were just starting.  Maybe they have just forgotten
that part as they gained experience.  We newbies need the experienced
folks to help us move up.
 
>I guess we need a better way of querying the records and encourage
>newbies to use the information before bringing up the same old question.
 
But of course!  If the information is hard to extract, it is pretty
useless even if it exists.  If we newbies keep asking the same old
questions (old to y'all, not to us or we wouldn't be asking), that shows
we don't or can't figure an easy way to extract info from the listserv
archives.  There is *lot* of stuff to sort through.
 
>The body of previous posts is our FAQ.  Unfortunately it is not web
>searchable as a whole, and since it has been changed to weekly segments,
>it has become far too difficult to use.
 
That makes it even more difficult to avoid asking the same old questions
repeatedly.
 
>I do have a web page that is supposed to provide an interface for querying
>the LISTSERV, however I have never put it to enough use to find out how
>well it works, and haven't gotten any feedback on it.
 
I wasn't even aware of it.  I can't speak for the other newbies on the
list.
 
>Joe posted instructions for making queries and apparently has made
>successful queries of the LISTSERV.  I wonder who else has worked on this
>and if we could incorporate such instructions into a periodic post or an
>initial greeting message
 
I missed Joe's posted.  A periodic (monthly?) post would be most welcome.
 
>Any ideas -- other than making the queries in the obscure and
>non-intuitive language of the LISTSERV?  I think Aaron was saying that
>there is a web interface available, but he hasn't had time to figure it
>out.
 
How about a FAQ?  Yes, the body of previous posts may be BEE-L's FAQ, but
they are scattered all over the place and difficult to find.  They would
be more useful if collected in one file.
 
The more experienced folks could contribute answers to the 'same old
questions'.  The FAQ can include instructions on how to get more detailed
information from archives.  If posted monthly, it should greatly cut down
the number of newbie questions.  Well--we can hope. :-)
 
What do y'all think?
 
        bob
--
Bob Billson, KC2WZ                                email: [log in to unmask]
first year beekeeper, 2 colonies                         [log in to unmask]
 
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