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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news1.oakland.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ucsnews!newshub.sdsu.edu!saturn!larryr From: larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu (Larry Riedel) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs. FreeBSD Date: 25 Jun 1995 09:01:01 GMT Organization: San Diego State University, College of Sciences Lines: 45 Message-ID: <3sj8kf$853@pandora.sdsu.edu> References: <3qfhhv$7uc@titania.pps.pgh.pa.us> <3sb2sr$rl8@pandora.sdsu.edu> <3sc9t4$2eh@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> <3sfcam$12n@pandora.sdsu.edu> <3si13i$aog@uriah.heep.sax.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: saturn.sdsu.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] J Wunsch (j@uriah.heep.sax.de) wrote: > Larry Riedel <larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu> wrote: > >I think that if there were 100 hackers responding to questions in > >this group then it would not take each one 80% of their time! > > This is based on a wrong assumption. Due to the Usenet propagation > delay, there will always be several people seeing the same article > without seeing that there's already an answer posted. You can watch > this just in this newsgroup. Oh, I would never suggest that exactly one hacker would reply to a given question - only that the per capita load would be significantly less if (say) 100 hackers were responding vs. (say) a couple of dozen. I would figure that increasing the head count by 4x might only reduce the average load on each person by 50% - but more questions would get answered, and more quickly, even though many would get answered more than once; but multiple answers is often a good thing, I think, because sometimes the first answer is confusing (unless it is yours:), and it makes more sense after seeing someone else answer a little differently. I think a situation like this would take up more aggregate developer time, but would reduce the per capita developer time as well as provide better technical support for the users. > READING articles doesn't take time, but THINKING about the articles > does already take a significant amount of time, even without answering > it. My experience has been that within a certain context I know whether or not I am the one who tends to respond to particular kinds of questions, and I can usually tell right away when looking at an article (often just the header) whether or not I will likely need to think about posting a followup. It seems like this type of thing happens in many of the USENET newsgroups - much of the time I will see a thread title and immediately know whom I expect to respond to the question, so I think that it would not take long before most of the developers could tell at a glance to which articles they might need to think about responding, since they each have their niche. Larry