ru...@yahoo.com wrote:
On 10/21/2009 01:40 AM, Lie Ryan wrote:
ru...@yahoo.com wrote:
1) It may look like a homework problem to you but it
probably isn't.
Seehttp://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/8ac6db43b09fdc92
Homework comes in many forms - school driven homework should be
treated the same as self driven research, IMO. You're not doing it to
be told the answer, you're likely doing it to learn.
As I said in point (5), you are not in a position to
decide how someone else best learns, even if your guess
that the question is homework, contrary to the evidence
in the url, is correct.
Amusingly, this came along today:
http://lifehacker.com/5386722/get-it-wrong-before-you-google-to-learn-it-better
I'd postulate that the same holds for heaving a question out on
c.l.p without taking at crack at it yourself. Try it, and if you
fail, take your findings to the great Google or to Usenet. But
not even trying (or evidencing your effort) is bound to get you
ignored or derided. Effectively "Hey programmer people, do my
work for me".
OTOH, since the poster took the trouble of registering to a newsgroup,
posting his problem, waiting a few hours for replies, and checking the
group for replies, requesting clarification, thanking, and getting back
to normal day activities;
You are way overstating the effort involved here.
Especially if the poster has posted to the group before
usually the only significant effort is writing the message
(and thinking about the responses of course but that has
to be done no matter where the poster seeks help.)
While some usenet relays throw up more roadblocks than others,
with both Google Groups and various other usenet hosts, posting
to a newsgroup is a pretty simple task with little more effort
than typing in a couple text-boxes.
You are also way understating the effort in Googling
something. I have spent literally days wading through
thousands of pages of Google results trying to find
accuate info before.
This seems more to be a lack of your own google-fu...
No it doesn't imply any such thing. It is exactly this
narrowness of focus, this inability to see alternate
explanations, that is leading you to think that
providing hints is the single one and only right
way of responding to any simple question on this list.
They may post here because, ...(ready for this?)...
they want a direct answer to their question!
The best way to get a direct answer is to show that you've
already made some effort. Usually this involves including some
code. It's a newsgroup composed of people volunteering their
time conversing with others, not a vending-machine thanklessly
spewing free answers.
Which is precisely the problem, You claim that purpose
is the single, only, best way of helping the person you are
answering. I am simply claiming you don't know that, can't
in a general sense know that. If you want to play teacher
and provide that style of answer, fine. But since you
(collective) have demonstrated that you are not even
able to accurately identify when someone is asking about
a homework problem (but are still arrogantly willing to
try), it is pretty reasonable for us "thems" to doubt your
claims that you know the best way to answer questions
Just because you can find a few examples where intuition was
wrong doesn't mean it's not the correct approach. Contrariwise,
it's good evidence that many folks laugh it off and give enough
context to demonstrate it's not homework (such as . However
folks clearly do post homework questions to the list (I'm
particularly amused by the ones that forget to remove the
question number from the homework they copy&pasted from) and most
list-members can detect the scent of homework compared to real work.
Please remember, I am only saying that simply answering
a question, as asked, is not a bad thing.
My hope then is that these people whom you coddle with spoon-fed
answers end up working with/for you instead of me.
-tkc
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