Re: Students and bandwidth

[Mark Levinson <mark -at- SD -dot- CO -dot- IL>]

 In defence of the posting that we can't accomodate everyone
 interested in joining techwr-l (specifically, students),
 I'd like to note that (Mark?) had a good point.

** I'm just a soul whose intentions are good.

   I believe that students should join and post like anyone else,
   turning to the list with questions only when any other reasonably
   accessible sources of satisfactory information or counsel have been
   exhausted.  I objected to the idea of assigning students to ask the
   list for help that they don't need, or that they could as easily
   obtain elsewhere.

   (I also regret, by the way, that various list members post queries
    here belonging to realms that have more specific lists of their own...
    realms like Windows Help, FrameMaker, MS Word ...
    I suppose that in many cases the writers aren't aware of the
    other lists, and when I have time I send abuseless messages
    enlightening them.)

   But if all the students subscribed and used the list responsibly?
   Well, I would hope that the number of questions would not rise
   in direct proportion to the number of students, because many
   questions would be common to many students.  Questions that tend
   to repeat could go into a FAQ, or some enterprising writer might
   realize that any question that students keep posting to the list
   would make a good topic in a textbook...

   As Herzl said, though, nothing works out as well as you'd hoped
   or as badly as you'd feared...

__________________________________________________________________________
||- Mark L. Levinson, mark -at- sd -dot- co -dot- il -- Box 5780, 46157 Herzlia, Israel -||
||     You can't judge right by looking at the wrong. - Willie Dixon    ||