Agreed, one and all. I only meant to stress being polite when you ask people not to post off-topic without notice -- unless they *KEEP* doing it.... There are some who require rudeness, sadly enough. I just meant that if you're going to bother to respond, let the person know what they did wrong, try to point them in the right direction (with a sentence or two, not a soliloquay, =o) and ask them to put [OT] in if the next time they consider it important enough. If 50 polite "look here for answers to that, please" messages in response to a post don't make the point, then they *deserve* a little rudeness. A little. *after* having been given a clue. Remember, generic questions will politely punish the ask-er simply by the volume of polite response. =o) I didn't mean to sound like I was ranting! lol! --- Dave Rolsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Paul wrote: > > > But if we're talking advocacy, I must point out that as a newbie, > my > > biggest problem was finding out where to look to *find* the manual. > > Also, when I was trying to get this system working ~now~, (the > > "out-of-the-box" problem we keep seeing), it was frequently > important > > that I get answers quickly, and though I hated to bother the list > with > > mundanities, it was a lot faster to ask (and get a response amid > the > > RTFM's) than to read through a dozen documents to find where the > > information I needed, especially when it was ditributed among three > or > > four of them and I needed to understand the relationships before it > > made any sense..... > > Well, your pressing schedule is your problem. If you're going to > tackle a > new technology you have to allow learning time. > > I'm all for people politely providing pointers as to what > documentation a > newbie should read (like "go to the guide from perl.apache.org and > read > the section on configuring"). But expecting people to then sit down > and > walk you through the commands necessary to get the install done is > just > not going to happen. If you need that sort of support, pay someone > to do > it for you. > > I highly doubt that this is any different in the Java world. > > Certainly, better packaging/smarter installers can help with this > too. > > > and friendly attitude towards (yes, even stupid) questions, I > remind us > > all that one "RTFM and quit wasting our time, jerk" response will > sour > > someone on the ENTIRE language, and that the someone might always > have > > been the next Bill Gates looking for a tool to sponsor.... > > There's nothing wrong with RTFM and a pointers towards the correct > books/sites/files, as long as its polite. > > > Explaining how to access an entry in a hash isn't worth a lot of > > people's time -- but I see those people occasionally spend the time > to > > point that out. While we're at it, let's always take the extra few > > seconds to be *nice* about it, and at least make a token effort > while > > we mention that there's a better forum for that at > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I think answering entirely off-topic questions instead of just > politely > asking the questioner to go elsewhere sets a bad precendent along the > lines of "those mod_perl folks know Perl really well so I'll ask my > regex > question there." > > > Keep in mind that while we're all for advocacy of mod_perl, > eventually a > person's support needs may reach a point where they really need to > start > thinking about paying for it. > > > -dave > > /*================== > www.urth.org > We await the New Sun > ==================*/ > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
