[Haskell-cafe] "How to Help Mailing Lists Help Readers"

[Justin Bailey]

Andy Oram over at O'Reilly just posted an article analyzing how
mailing list readers are helped or hindered in the Perl and Ruby on
Rails communities. His most interesting conclusion is that many
posters come without the background needed to understand answers. That
is certainly been the case on the cafe in many instances. I believe if
he had analyzed the Haskell-Cafe list he would have found a much
higher percentage of user questions are answered, and sometimes in
incredible depth.

His conclusion seems to be that, for newbies at least, books and
articles that lead the reader gently into the new domain is the
answer. As I've learned Haskell over the last year I've found that to
definitely be the case.

The article is at http://praxagora.com/andyo/professional/mailing_list_follow_up

He'll also be speaking at OSCON next week and I look forward to
hearing what he has to say.

Justin