On 21.06.13 10:13, Rado Q wrote: > But not to make one side happy and reject the other, how about this: > we get 2 lists, one for the basic&simple stuff (mutt-users), the other > for "advanced" (mutt-adventures). Have some moderators sitting on > the basic- line forwarding the advanced stuff (&users) to the other list. > Would you volunteer?
It isn't always necessary to make a simple matter complicated. Most humans learn after a while how to identify a KLB, and anyway, netiquette already encourages an appeal for assistance to include some evidence of investigative effort prior to posting. It is not necessary for us to immediately identify every query which _might_ have been able to be answered by the poster, if he had known what keyword to look for, and in what documentation. It is only desirable to chastise any serial abuser of the list's patience - a KLB. Your lawyer's response, Rado, lacks practical merit. Many trivial keystroke combinations, tricks, and techniques are not explicitly documented in man or info pages. If googling for the OP's issue, whatever it was, gives a quick hit, then LMGTFY would have been another appropriate response, admittedtly. But taking a positive attitude to life, and helping an old bloke across the road, is not too great a burden for most who are blessed with a little more youthful energy and memory. (As we have seen.) The real and substantial impairments, both physical and mental, which accrue with advancing age, are easily overlooked in the ignorance of youth, or even middle age. Though two decades behind our petitioner for a quick hint, I have for a decade and a half found it necessary to accumulate a private multifarious manpage, or brain-fade-insurance, now amounting to 350 pages of stuff which has worked for me, but spans a quarter of a century of using dozens of unix utilities, scripting languages, cross-copilers, linker scripting, system administration, and embedded systems development, etc. Without that, I'd be asking a few more questions on the less hostile lists too. Ya can't remember it all, and in declining years, the time remaining looms in all its stark brevity. The increasing rate of wetware memory drop-outs in our autumn years becomes increasingly unnerving, and even figuring out where to look isn't as easy as it once was. I doubt that I'll be able to deal with computers at 80, despite earning my living with them and designing embedded systems for nearly three decades. My recommendation is: Cut the guy a bit of slack - you'll be there too one day - saying "What?? Already?". That doesn't mean I'm any more patient than anyone else with someone younger than myself who just doesn't like reading manuals. Helping youngsters to self-educate is a service to them, if done in a positive way. It is hardly feasible to respond ideally in every case, but those who responded with a positive attitude helped to make the world a better place. Our list traffic is not yet unbearable, I submit. Erik -- A computer is like an air conditioner, it works poorly when you open Windows.
