how does this work

[Bret Hughes]

On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 20:05, Nicolas & Maria wrote:
> How does this email thing work, who sees what ??

You send a message to the list and about 4000 people all over the world
get a copy.  If you pose a question in a reasonable tone after having
done at least a modicum of research on your own, and someone knows the
answer, you will probably get some help.  

A couple of tips to get you email considered keeping in mind this list
gets about 200 mails a day and most of us who have been using Red Hat
products for a while skim pretty fast over them.

.  use a good subject line.  The one on this mail would not usually be
sufficient to get someone interested.

do not post in html all lot of folks (usually the ones you want to read
your mail) filter out all html mail

read the docs for what ever you are having problems with.

use google to see if your problem can be answered by reading someone
else's experience.

search the archives  at http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/  I
do not know if there is a better reachable archive or not but at least
redhats sort of works.

If there is an error message involved cut and paste it into the mail. 
Eric Raymond write a neat paper on how to ask an intelligent question
this could be your first google task " Find it and read it"  While you
are at it go ahead and read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"  It will give
you an idea of how open source software works.  Sometimes I wonder if
that should be bizarre :)
 
HTH and that you were not asking about the smtp inner workings :)

Bret