-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 01:09:50PM -0600, Gianfranco Berardi wrote: > Of course, if a person is a newbie and needs help, they probably aren't > used to the protocol for asking for help.
Yes, I do remember my newbie days. However, after the fourth or fifth attempt to get help on various subjects over the timespan of roughly a month that went unanswered or too vague to be helpful, I started looking around for some tips on how not to suck static in technical forums. When all else fails, STFW. > If you went to a friend who "knows a lot about computers" you generally > would say, "Hey, I need some help with my computer" which invites the > response, "What's the problem you're having?" in some form or another. > > Some people assume that they can start the same kind of conversation in > a mailing list. So that accounts for the people who post horrible > subject lines but have interesting posts. There's a couple false assumptions here: User lists aren't generally comprised of personal friends, but rather loose collectives of people who, for the most part, aren't more than long-distance acquaintences. Second, spoken language is vastly different from written language. You can't expect to consistantly get the same response from written form as you do spoken form. Lastly, you compared spoken language with a personal friend with written language to mostly strangers; you can't get too much farther apart on the communications spectrum than that. > At the same time, you have the people who just have no clue. But are > they ignorant or stupid? Stupid people can't be helped. Ignorance can be > destroyed by teaching. Stupidity and ignorance are indistinguishable when the speaker can't properly convey thier thoughts. This brings us back to asking questions the smart way. > I do have a problem with people who have the time to flame these people > though. It is just rude, especially in an environment where community is > the primary means of gaining knowledge. The problem, though, is people shouldn't waste other people's time, bandwidth and spool space with "help me too" drivel. Its insulting to the community; if you can't convey your problem, I don't see why we should be bothered to help, or for that matter, put up with trying to fix it. They can hire a consultant to go pry the details out of them, that's what consultants get paid to do. > How many people grew up isolated from other computer geeks and don't > have the contacts to know about things we take for granted, like > Google or LUGs? Even in 1995, you had to be living in a hole to not know what a search engine was. It's 2003 now. Even AOL users can figure out Google, and that says a lot! The world has never catered to willfully ignorant troglodites, and I don't see that changing any time soon. > If someone knows about these sources of information but refuses to use > them, that is just plain wrong. They should be flamed on sight. Glad you agree. Person has problem, but won't provide information about problem so folks can help. So why are you taking issue with me, we've got the same bottom line, I'm just not using any undocumented exceptions. - -- .''`. Baloo Ursidae <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> : :' : proud Debian admin and user `. `'` `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fix a system -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+eWooJ5vLSqVpK2kRAlKdAJ4h/vMJ3DvtxUgE068ITBULzxxMcACgzN6P 3wtiSy3A3DUSpN9kTm8NQ/k= =JdDn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
