05-06-04 04:56 PM
On Thu, 6 May 2004 09:56:45 -0400
"Thomas H. George" <tom@spininternet.com> wrote:
>On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 01:30:43PM -0400, Chris Metzler wrote:
>
>
> Checked the above link - quite a lecture. Still I read these postings
> daily and had not noticed any earlier items on this topic. Perhaps they
> were there and I did not realize their relevance.
Well, it's not surprising you wouldn't have noticed, if only because
this mailing list is so very busy. I filter what I look at here
ruthlessly, and I'm quite certain that amongst the stuff I delete
without looking are articles I would have been interested in. But
that's the breaks; I simply cannot look at everything here. And
that's why, when I have a question, an archive search is so helpful.
And as an aside, your question came up in debian-user at least one,
and possibly two, other times yesterday alone.
> The whole thrust of the lecture gives me pause. Of course, if I
> encounter a significant problem I try to document carefully how it
> occurred. In this case I thought I was dealing with a trivial change in
> an upgrade and the question would result in a routine response.
It wasn't an unreasonable assumption; and in fact, the change (if
I'm indeed right about what the problem is) *is* fairly trivial.
But rather than being a pass on making an effort to figure it out
oneself, I'd argue that that's exactly the reason why one *should*.
A huge fraction (most?) of the questions here are of that same
nature -- trivial questions that the questioner could have figured
out on his/her own with some judicious web searching or such. To
the questioner, since they're trivial, they seem like not a big
deal; but someone has to answer them, and when there are a hundred
or more in a day, things don't seem so trivial anymore. And when
you've seen the same question answered over and over and over and
over and over by people who each could have found the answer directly
if they'd put effort in themselves before asking others to solve it
for them, it gets exhausting.
When I saw your post to the list, my first reaction was "Again?" and
my first instinct was to just delete it. Instead, I posted the
suggestion to read ESR's article in the hope not only that you'd use
the guidelines therein to help you with *this* problem, but indeed
with lots of future problems as well. It helps all of us. It helps
the potential respondants not have to deal with the same questions
over and over. It helps you in several ways: by trying to find an
answer or solve things yourself, you learn more and possibly get the
answer more quickly; by having made that effort, and reporting on it,
in a post to the list, you increase your chances of getting a response
*and* the likelihood that that response will be actually useful. (in
the latter instance, heck, in this very thread, someone gave you a
suggestion to which you replied by saying that you had already tried
that before posting the question; so time got wasted for the both of
you there because of the way in which the initial question was posed).
About three hours after you posted your query to debian-user, someone
else posted about the same issue. After having responded to you,
I felt like I couldn't fairly blow off that one too, so I gave him
a similar response. He read the piece, took it to heart, did some
searching of the archives of this mailing list, and reported back
here a half-hour later that he'd found the solution.
> The problem is I am neither a newbie nor an expert. I am a 75 year old
> physicist with a lot of past programing experience and I can work things
> out in detail when necessary.
>
> If I were a newbie and read that lecture - how many pages was it? - I
> would say debian linux is not for me, I'm out of here.
>
> Well, I'm not a newbie, I love debian linux, I have received
> immeasurable help from many people on this list and I'll stick with it.
I hear what you're saying. To me, though, pointing people at what
will maximize their chances of getting a solution to their problem,
and what will maximize their chances of getting good, helpful answers
to their questions, *is* kindness. The unkind thing is to just ignore
such posts, leaving questioners with no solution, leaving them
wondering why no one answered, leaving them wondering if there is
no answer, etc. And the impossible thing is to do neither, and to
respond in detail to all such questions over and over and over.
It's bad for the questioner, bad for the respondant, and bad for the
nature and level of the traffic on the list. That's my opinion.
-c
--
Chris Metzler cmetzler@speakeasy.snip-me.net
(remove "snip-me." to email)
"As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I
have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
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