On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 21:17 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> William L. Maltby wrote:
> > I point to the following *not* as a license for more experienced folks
> > to become inordinately rude or terse with those who don't stick closely
> > to the guidelines presented, but in the hope that some of the newer
> > folks may have been ignorant of some of these "net common courtesies".
> >
> > My goal is that we'll see "better" questions than some of what we've
> > had.
> >
> > It starts here
> >
> > http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#asking
> >
> > and goes through here
> >
> > Don't ask people to reply by private e-mail
> >
> > There is more of interest and there are postings on the web that are
> > shorter and more focused on the "do your homework and reports pertinent
> > data", but I'm getting the feeling that a general reminder is in order.
> >
> > HTH and no offense targeted at/to anybody.
> >
> > Bill
> ><snip list sig stuff>
>
> No offence taken but in the same way I don't think that link really
> follows the spirit of what happens here.
>
> The link you posted implies that you should exhaust all avenues before
> posting to a forum with a question.
Yes. There is one referenced by LFS that is more reasonable. I don't
really care if they exhaust all avenues or not. I do care when the reply
to the question is *appropriately* "use the help on your desktop..." and
"right click on properties...".
IMO that sort of question descends from "making reasonable use of freely
donated time and effort" to "abusing generosity because of laziness". We
see so many where no one has even checked the archives of this forum,
much less done any of the things mentioned in that article.
The other major failing that is seen commonly is "... doesn't do ..."
and they give no background detail. No someone posts with things like
"what mainboard, ethernet, HDs, kenel..." etc. How many times have we
seen that?
I believe it is reasonable for those seeking assistance to expend some
energy to minimize (or at least reduce) the time and effort to be
expended by the folks who may try to help them.
My hope is only that people will tend to *not* habitually squander
generously donated time and effort because it costs them nothing to
squander it. And I have seen posts by others that indicate they also
recognize this trend occasionally.
On the technical/cost side, we need not discuss bandwidth, resource
consumption, etc. The fine folks who maintain/provide that may have some
feelings on that part of it.
>
> That isn't really in the spirit of this type of forum imho. Typically
> you get *better* answers on this forum than you do searching the web as
> the people here have first hand experience of using Centos. This forum
> shouldn't be seen as the last place you ask, in my opinion it should be
> one of the first. Additionally the link you posted asserts that people
> here won't want to be a question posters free consultant. All the
> people on this list that are regulars are on this list to contribute and
> share experience and information for free.
>
> For Centos questions this really should be one of the first places you
> ask for the best quality answers, after some remedial research. I enjoy
> being a part of this list as people's questions and the answers and
> ideas exchanged expand your knowledge and lead you to know about what
> others find hard or have had problems with, which is invaluable.
>
> All questions are valid, often people asking the simplest of questions
> are the ones who can benefit the most from information provided here.
>
> Admittedly personal flaming and those who are almost religious in their
> IT beliefs are not welcome on this type of forum, but we've all been in
> situations where comments ignite a passion to set the world
> straight.....and sometimes those discussions are the most amusing and
> thought provoking....--- dare I mention SELinux and disabling it..... :-P
Your POV is respected and may be correct. Personally, I love to help
those who demonstrate initiative and consideration by not posing
questions that demonstrate that very little research was done. I usually
don't offer answers to the others because I choose not to descend into
the "first return from google..." camp of replies (nothing wrong with
that, I'm just to lazy to post it a thousand times :-)
As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, "... in the hope that some of
the newer folks may have been ignorant of some of these "net common
courtesies"...". I had no intent of asking all to do all mentioned, but
I did hope to instill a sense of obligation to be mindful of wasting
time and effort, due to "laziness".
> <snip sigs>
Bill
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