From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 00:29:05 -0400 From: Dan Cross To: McLone , Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] the futility of #plan9 on irc Message-ID: <20050526042905.GA22273@augusta.math.psu.edu> References: <20050523233359.GD14127@xware.cx> <20050524210721.GA2250@xware.cx> <20050524212015.GA18538@augusta.math.psu.edu> <451cb301050525210456f27637@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <451cb301050525210456f27637@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Cc: Topicbox-Message-UUID: 551867ac-ead0-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Thu, May 26, 2005 at 07:04:24AM +0300, McLone wrote: > /msg memoserv help I have no idea what that does. Evidently, it sends a help request message to some sort of `bot' that can serve memos (that much is obvious); perhaps you're implying that you can use this as a way to implement a FAQ listing. Regardless, I don't see how it addresses my point: In the IRC model, if you get bad data, you have significantly less chance of getting a correction if you don't stick around and monitor future traffic to pick it out. If someone who doesn't know the answer isn't monitoring, you have no chance of getting a correction, unless people sit around and read IRC logs and go back and post corrections to questions asked in the past and unrelated to the current topic(s) of discussion in the channel (that's another thing about IRC: you don't get threading in the robust way you do with a mailing list or even, God Forbid, USENET Newsgroups). And then you're back to waiting around until someone who knows what they're talking about sees the request, which is the same situation you have with 9fans. Or somebody says, ``ask the bot....'' and you spend time figuring out how, but even then the bot may not be programmed with the answer to YOUR question. You might as well read the Wiki instead. - Dan C.