On Fri, Apr 13, 2001, Yotam Rubin wrote about "Counter productive posts.":
> Gentle people,
>
> I fear that I can no longer no longer bridle my tongue and refrain from
> reacting to Mr. Keren's inappropriate posts. Mr. Keren has adopted a habit
> of patronizing, humiliating and offending any user which does not submit
> questions of adequate quality. Mr Keren, a large number of users does not
> know how to properly ask questions, dismissing them as mindless losers is
> counter productive. Instead of providing these users in aid with unwitty
> insults, your replies should descriptive and cordial; do not proclaim that
> a certain user is a mere "Waste of bandwidth" for it only discourages the
> discussed user. New users should not be afraid to ask questions, no matter
> how poorly they've phrased their requests. Prior to unleashing your
> distressed lingual gestapo, perhaps you should consider the merits of such an
> act. Your pompous nature is extremely conspicuous in nearly all of your posts.
> Upon holstering you ego, you should be able to realize that bashing user does
> not help anyone besides your gashed ego.
>
I'm sure "Mr. Keren" doesn't need my defense, but I think what you're
saying about him is very unfair. You have to remember one thing: Guy, me,
and the other "experts" are on this list for fun, not as paid "customer
service". It's not the newbies' "right" to ask questions without thinking
first, and without hanging around the mailing list a bit to see how it works.
Some people's _questions_ on this list border with patronizing and disrespect
(I'm not talking about the specific question Guy answered this time!).
It's time people took out "doesn't work" out of their lexicon. When a program
"doesn't work" it means it prints some unexpected message, core dumps, or
something like that, and it's not fair holding this information from us (the
people who are trying to help you). Unlike an ISP's hotline (for example),
mailing-list help is almost never interactive: if the questioner and
answerer ping-pong clarifications more than 2 times, the answerer will
become bored (unless it's some exciting technical issue).
By the way, if you've been following my postings in this list in the past,
you would have noticed that I took a rather different approach to answering
"incomplete" questions than guy's. In many cases, instead of asking for
more information, I tried to "guess" the probable reason of the problem.
In some cases I was surprisingly successful (e.g, my guess that a Hebrew
shellscript didn't work because it didn't have a #!/bin/sh) but in other
cases it was an utter failure - in one case I even spent over an hour
explaining some points relevant to someone's questions, only to later
realize that he didn't think his question through and he didn't really
mean what he wrote. Such failures are very disappointing, and sometimes
make me decide not to answer questions. If you don't want me to stop
answering questions completely (maybe you do :)), the number of thoughtless
questions needs to be kept down...
Just my 8.34 agorot...
P.S. Did you know that Guy gave many (and I mean MANY) newbie Linux lectures
in the Haifa Linux Club? I think he's the last person that can be criticised
for not being helpful to Linux beginners.
--
Nadav Har'El | Friday, Apr 13 2001, 20 Nisan 5761
[EMAIL PROTECTED] |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |The trouble with political jokes is they
http://nadav.harel.org.il |get elected.
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