On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 10:20:49AM +0100, Stuart wrote: > 2009/9/3 J DeBord <jasdebord@xxxxxxxxx>: > > Telling someone RTFM is just rude and mean. Manipulating dates and times can > > be confusing for beginners and experienced people alike. I would suggest > > that when a question asked here causes you to respond with RTFM, don't > > respond at all. Save yourself the time and trouble and save the person > > asking the question the grief of being insulted. And Tedd your condescending > > response caused me to lose respect for you. I'm sure the OP would have been > > more than thankful to receive the same response without the RTFM. I'll read > > any response to this, but I won't have anything more to say. This list has > > been polluted enough lately with nonsense. Incredible. > > You're entitled to your opinion as much as I am, and my opinion is > that not making it clear to people that the answer to their question > is plainly obvious in the manual is just as rude if not more so than > suggesting they RTFM. > > I make a point to never just say RTFM but to also answer the question > at the same time, but IMHO not telling people how fundamental their > question was does not help them in the long run. At the end of the day > it just encourages them to continue to rely on this list rather than > learning how to find the answer themselves and to only use this list > as a last resort. > > I make no apology for my attitude towards this type of question, and > if you don't like it you can stick it where the sun don't shine. +1 I can't argue with this approach. If you're going to point the poster to the manual and *then* explain, that's the ideal way to do this. Now it could be argued that you could say, "Please refer to http://php.net/manual/en/whatever.php for more info." Or you could say, "RTFM". The former is more polite, but the latter will suffice. Both mean the same thing; one is simply more terse. Also stipulated that one should research a question as much as possible before posting to this list. We're not tutors; more like professional side-checkers. (Please don't take this the wrong way, newbies. You're welcome to ask questions here. Just do whatever research you can first, and follow our advice afterward, to RTFM.) Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
