On Apr 23, 10:00 am, James Bennett <ubernost...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Phil Mocek
>
> <pmocek-list-django-us...@mocek.org> wrote:
> > That depends on how you look at things. I've been referencing Eric S.
> > Raymond's essay, "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" [2], on this list
> > recently, because I'm not used to such poorly-worded or lazy questions
> > being asked on a technical mailing list. Programmers don't typically
> > operate like this, and it's odd to see subscribers to a technical list
> > put up with so much wasted time and effort. I assume it's a result of
> > lots of participation from people who are new to programming and
> > unfamiliar with netiquette and the ways of hackers.
>
> That does indeed depend on how you look at things. Me, I see somebody
> spamming ESR's diatribe and think "wow, that's a real dick move".
> Because, honestly, if I'm new to something and feeling my way around,
> getting smacked upside the head with ESR's "Why You're Too Dumb To Be
> On This List" would be a real turn-off for me, ya know?
>
> At any rate, if you can't bear to hang out on a list with people who
> are working to learn and maybe don't yet know how to formulate
> questions the way you'd like them to, there's an unsubscribe link in
> the footer of every message. I trust you'll be able to use it to your
> advantage.
FWIW, I have had to throw "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" at
people on mod_python list on a few occasions. Especially where there
are a very limited amount of people answering questions and who don't
have much time, it gets very frustrating when people want an in depth
explanation of why something doesn't work for them when the only
information they provide is a couple of sentences saying "It doesn't
work" and don't provide any error messages, no actual code to show
what their doing and then get narky at you because your crystal ball
isn't working well enough to know what the hell they are talking
about.
So, in some situations when you have difficult people who expect that
the only reason you exist is to help them, then this sort of response
is reasonable, but it should be last resort. Where someone is trying
to genuinely learn something, is putting in an effort themselves by
showing they have done some investigation of the issue, and isn't just
trolling, dropping it on them is probably a bit over the top.
One has to keep in mind that these same people when they learn enough
may be the ones who take over answering questions and so give you some
respite. :-)
Graham
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