Every list goes through this sort of thrashing:
1. There are some users who are too self-important to remember back when they were once n00bs. From what I've heard, these are the bulk of users on the Debian lists <grin>.
2. There are others who can provide the simple answer AND a gentle reminder where the n00b might find the answer him/herself. What's the old saying: "You ctch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
3. Then there is the group (actually, subcategory of 1) who never has any time and can't be bothered to read anything other than super-intellectual stuff and who fills the replies with "your're wasting our time."
The most successful lists have a lot of users in category 2.
Enjoy,
Same happened to me when I joined the Fedora dlist and asked some newbie question which I'm too ashamed to remember now :-)
Point is, the time it takes to reply with a "you're wasting my time" could actually be used to give some help. If peeps are too busy why bothering replying with nasty comments in the first place?!
Just my 2 cents...
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:37:08 -0700, Collins Richey crichey@gmail.com wrote:
Every list goes through this sort of thrashing:
- There are some users who are too self-important to remember back
when they were once n00bs. From what I've heard, these are the bulk of users on the Debian lists <grin>.
- There are others who can provide the simple answer AND a gentle
reminder where the n00b might find the answer him/herself. What's the old saying: "You ctch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
- Then there is the group (actually, subcategory of 1) who never has
any time and can't be bothered to read anything other than super-intellectual stuff and who fills the replies with "your're wasting our time."
The most successful lists have a lot of users in category 2.
Enjoy,
-- Collins When I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.... The Berlin Wall has fallen. - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
I agree,
If a question really is very simple to answer, why not just give the answer, after all asking questions is how we all learn....
Self importance really is ultimatelty self-defeating, no one knows everything....and one day we all have to ask.
I've been in the computing game far too long to to claim to know definite answers to everything, the more you learn the more
you realise you don't know!
;-)
P.
Joao Medeiros wrote:
Same happened to me when I joined the Fedora dlist and asked some newbie question which I'm too ashamed to remember now :-)
Point is, the time it takes to reply with a "you're wasting my time" could actually be used to give some help. If peeps are too busy why bothering replying with nasty comments in the first place?!
Just my 2 cents...
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:37:08 -0700, Collins Richey crichey@gmail.com wrote:
Every list goes through this sort of thrashing:
- There are some users who are too self-important to remember back
when they were once n00bs. From what I've heard, these are the bulk of users on the Debian lists <grin>.
- There are others who can provide the simple answer AND a gentle
reminder where the n00b might find the answer him/herself. What's the old saying: "You ctch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
- Then there is the group (actually, subcategory of 1) who never has
any time and can't be bothered to read anything other than super-intellectual stuff and who fills the replies with "your're wasting our time."
The most successful lists have a lot of users in category 2.
Enjoy,
-- Collins When I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.... The Berlin Wall has fallen. - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:56:00 +0100, Peter Farrow peter@farrows.org wrote:
If a question really is very simple to answer, why not just give the answer, after all asking questions is how we all learn....
No. RTFM and then ask questions is how we all learn.
If I see a question I'm interested in that I don't know the answer to, I'll do some research and find the answer. 75% of the time that I make a post that's what it's based upon. I'm frequently happy to do it because I'm increasing my own knowledge, but when the poster is of the "I need to be spoon fed" variety and asks a follow up question that is clearly answered online it's a waste of everyone's time.
Besides, how many times have you seen the "I REALLY NEED HELP RIGHT NOW OMG I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO XYZ!!!!! MY BOSS IS GOING TO FIRE ME, HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME!"? If you're used to getting spoon-fed and then get into a situation where you need help right now, spoon feeding is very unlikely to happen fast enough, but man/info/google are always there, unless you never learned to use them ;)
I agree with Collins. The more people in his "group 2" the better. Respond with help and respond with a nudge.
Greg
On Mar 30, 2005, at 10:37 AM, Greg Knaddison wrote:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:56:00 +0100, Peter Farrow peter@farrows.org wrote:
If a question really is very simple to answer, why not just give the answer, after all asking questions is how we all learn....
No. RTFM and then ask questions is how we all learn.
i suspect it may be time to refer back to this document:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
-steve
--- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
Peter Farrow wrote:
I agree,
If a question really is very simple to answer, why not just give the answer, after all asking questions is how we all learn.... Self importance really is ultimatelty self-defeating, no one knows everything....and one day we all have to ask. I've been in the computing game far too long to to claim to know definite answers to everything, the more you learn the more you realise you don't know! ;-) P.
Perhaps, but this level of ignorance is dangerous since he first asked how to do it through an SSH login. What exactly does he want to do? Power down? Shutdown and restart? Just logoff?
I remember a dumb mistake that I made six or seven years ago. The cure was a weekend round-trip flight from NYC to Dallas to undo the damage in person. Expensive and quite embarassing.
I'm not going to tell him "shutdown -h now" when he really needs ^D to logoff instead. He sounds Indian - what if he's in Bombay and the server's in Sri Lanka with no local technicians to fix things? Better to tell him to read the fine manual before giving him the wrong answer to what he really needed because he asked for the wrong thing.
To the original poster - if you're still here - Tell your management that you need a week to get up to speed with unix. You should be able to learn enough basic info in that time to know how to operate a RedHat/CentOS based system if there's nothing wrong with it.
Joao Medeiros wrote:
Same happened to me when I joined the Fedora dlist and asked some newbie question which I'm too ashamed to remember now :-)
Point is, the time it takes to reply with a "you're wasting my time" could actually be used to give some help. If peeps are too busy why bothering replying with nasty comments in the first place?!
Just my 2 cents...
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:37:08 -0700, Collins Richey crichey@gmail.com wrote:
Every list goes through this sort of thrashing:
- There are some users who are too self-important to remember back
when they were once n00bs. From what I've heard, these are the bulk of users on the Debian lists <grin>.
- There are others who can provide the simple answer AND a gentle
reminder where the n00b might find the answer him/herself. What's the old saying: "You ctch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
- Then there is the group (actually, subcategory of 1) who never has
any time and can't be bothered to read anything other than super-intellectual stuff and who fills the replies with "your're wasting our time."
The most successful lists have a lot of users in category 2.
Enjoy,
-- Collins When I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.... The Berlin Wall has fallen. - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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Collins Richey -
Ed Clarke -
Greg Knaddison -
Joao Medeiros -
Peter Farrow -
Steve Huff