Re: A New Year's Resolution

[wjhardaker@ucdavis.edu]

>>>>> On Mon, 3 Jan 2000 14:34:31 -0500, wmperry@aventail.com (William M. Perry) said:

>> Is it worth the effort to respond when some of them are that old?
>> They have certainly either solved the problem, discussion, or
>> simply dropped it without my help at this point...

William> Some have, some haven't.  I always play it safe and try to
William> answer everything.  I will usually fire off a quick 'im in
William> email overload right now, but you are #9622 in line, you will
William> be serviced eventually'. :)

Yeah, and hence the reason I have so many messages in my mail
folders...  Those times when I was away.  Or busy.  Or writing code.

One other suggestion that hasn't been mentioned yet: create a mailing
list.  My snmp package has 2 important ones.  One for users, and one
for coders.  Then I deleted all references to my personal email
address out of the documentation and left only the reference to the
coders list, saying "write there with questions and someone will help
you".  The idea was that if more people wrote the mailing list they
would cross-help each other more.  It sort of worked.  The 209 people
on the coders list occasionally help the people that write in.  Ok,
about 5 of the 209 actually do.  But the good news is that they
answered about 25% of the messages, leaving me with less of a load.
That percentage has grown lately and is probably near 50%.  Actually,
giving write access to the CVS repository is what made the second jump 
in number.  Involve them more and they will help more!

But you're right, I think always answering is the polite way to go...

-- 
"Ninjas aren't dangerous.  They're more afraid of you than you are of them."