On 2007-04-04, Delaney, Timothy (Tim) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Antoon Pardon wrote: > >> People are often enough not very exact in their communication and >> that goes double for people who are new in a particular subject. >> So I think it is entirely appropiate to think about the real question >> the person is strugling with that hides between the question >> actually asked. >> >> Yes sometimes those who try to guess the intentions of the OP >> are going totally off in the wrong direction. But I have also >> seen those people providing very helpfull information, while >> those that would stick to the "actual" question didn'y provide >> very usefull information. > > And yet it's giving the *wrong* information if the person was asking > exactly the question they intended to ask.
So? You are in a sitituation where it isn't clear what answer will be the most usefull. So you make a judgement call and judgment calls can sometimes be wrong. > If you think there is some ambiguity, you should *clarify* the question > before answering. Answering a different question to the one that is > asked just causes problems, and the kind of thread this has degenerated > into. I disagree. This thread has degenerated, not because some people answered a different question, but because other people didn't like that and reacted. If you think an answer to a particular question needs extra clarification, you can just provide that clarification. Of course some people can always find complains. Even if you point out errors in what other say, you can draw complaints because they think you are bothering with details they think are unimportant which may detract from what they think is the real issue. So my advise is not to bother with telling how questions should be answered but to just provide the information you think is missing. -- Antoon Pardon -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
