Bug 13790

[intentional submission to GNATS left for the archives ]

* Bob@WhiteBarn.com (Bob@WhiteBarn.com) [990917 19:28]:
>
>>Number:         13790
>>Category:       advocacy
>>Description:
>Not a problem--I just wanted to say kudos to the advocacy folks after
>noticing the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe pieces recently.
>
>Keep up the good work!

Pardon me for being the asshole now, how much I agree, but please,
PLEASE don't abuse the pr system like this.

If you feel you need to congratulate the advocacy guys (whom we all
are in a sense) mail to advocacy@freebsd.org. You will reach them in
that way.

If we start to dirty the PR system with stuff like this, we lose the
effectiveness of the PR system which is already a hell of a job to
maintain.

Of course I speak from my own person, but I hope the others agree 
with me on this one.

-- 
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven/Asmodai                  asmodai(at)wxs.nl
The BSD Programmer's Documentation Project <http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai>
Network/Security Specialist        BSD: Technical excellence at its best
Haste makes waste.

Comment 2 Steve Price 1999-09-17 19:02:48 UTC

State Changed
From-To: open->closed

Thanks from all of us for the kudos, but as Jeroen mentioned this really 
belongs on the mailing list, advocacy@freebsd.org, and not as a PR. Thanks. 

Jeroen & Steve, I'm with you. I've been managing software development
projects for 15 years so I understand the importance of keeping a PR system
clean. Nobody wants the metrics mucked up.

In fact, I actually set out this morning with the intent of sending E-Mail
to the advocacy folks.

I wasn't certain of their E-Mail address. (In retrospect, I should've just
tried Advocacy@FreeBSD.Org and let it bounce if I was wrong.)

I searched hoping to find a list of mail aliases or something. Most of the
hits that came back were RQN issues. No E-Mail alias were listed anywhere
in the top ten hits. Send-pr.html was the number 3 hit. It seemed hard to
imagine how "advocacy" would be a problem category taken as seriously as
say "kern," so I "abused" the PR system after 5 minutes of searching in
vain.

I apologize.

But this sequence of events leaves me with some nagging questions

  1. Does advocacy even belong on send-pr.html? What would be a reasonable
     problem to report in the advocacy category? Would you actually track
     it and close it?
  2. Why doesn't Advocacy@FreeBSD.Org show up in the top 10 search hits?
  3. What ever happened to the host Advocacy.FreeBSD.Org? (One of the
     search page hits lead there.)
  4. I can't be the only guy to've ever introduced a "noise" message into
     the PR system. Is there a systemic problem that makes it difficult to
     close a "noise" message and get on with it?

Thanks for your consideration.

    Bob

Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai wrote:

> [intentional submission to GNATS left for the archives ]
>
> * Bob@WhiteBarn.com (Bob@WhiteBarn.com) [990917 19:28]:
> >
> >>Number:         13790
> >>Category:       advocacy
> >>Description:
> >Not a problem--I just wanted to say kudos to the advocacy folks after
> >noticing the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe pieces recently.
> >
> >Keep up the good work!
>
> Pardon me for being the asshole now, how much I agree, but please,
> PLEASE don't abuse the pr system like this.
>
> If you feel you need to congratulate the advocacy guys (whom we all
> are in a sense) mail to advocacy@freebsd.org. You will reach them in
> that way.
>
> If we start to dirty the PR system with stuff like this, we lose the
> effectiveness of the PR system which is already a hell of a job to
> maintain.
>
> Of course I speak from my own person, but I hope the others agree
> with me on this one.
>
> --
> Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven/Asmodai                  asmodai(at)wxs.nl
> The BSD Programmer's Documentation Project <http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai>
> Network/Security Specialist        BSD: Technical excellence at its best
> Haste makes waste.

On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, Bob Van Valzah wrote:

# But this sequence of events leaves me with some nagging questions
# 
#   1. Does advocacy even belong on send-pr.html? What would be a reasonable
#      problem to report in the advocacy category? Would you actually track
#      it and close it?

I added the advocacy category to cover problems encountered with the
WWW pages on advocacy.freebsd.org.  Don't know that it has proven to
have been worhwhile since this site no longer exists.

#   2. Why doesn't Advocacy@FreeBSD.Org show up in the top 10 search hits?

Probably because it is a relatively new list and doesn't see the
amount of traffic that the other lists do.

#   3. What ever happened to the host Advocacy.FreeBSD.Org? (One of the
#      search page hits lead there.)

It has gone away and been replaced with http://freebsd.tesserae.com/
among other sites, I believe.

#   4. I can't be the only guy to've ever introduced a "noise" message into
#      the PR system. Is there a systemic problem that makes it difficult to
#      close a "noise" message and get on with it?

Nope.  It took me about 30 seconds to close the PR and type in my
reasoning behind it.  I have an account on the GNATS box so I closed
it instead of Jeroen.  To the best of my knowledge he doesn't have
an account yet, though he does the Project a tremendous service
by drudging through the PR database looking for things to help out
with.

# Thanks for your consideration.

Thank you.

-steve

#     Bob