At 06:29 AM 4/24/2006, Philip Thompson wrote:
I think you are too kind. I think my response would have been likes
Jay's... RTFM. However, you went above and beyond. Isn't this
listserv great!! =D


Thanks, Philip. There may or may not be such a thing as stupid questions but there sure as hell are a lot of stupid answers. We all started out from places of ignorance, and there's TONS that each of us still doesn't know in a thousand fields. If I walk up to a group of geneticists and ask, "What's the difference between a chromosome and a ribosome?" I might get a laugh but I'd hope also to get pointed in the right direction. I figure all any of us need is a helpful nudge toward the documentation. "RTFM" isn't very helpful when the documentation of web design is so many millions of pages. It only takes a minute to look up the right link, especially with php.net's incredible /search engine.

If you see someone struggling up a rocky face, do you kick them or give them a boost? We know nothing about the people who post here. What kind of educational resources have we each had? And what an amazing effort to post to a technical listserve in a foreign language. I'd like to see the haughty, scornful posters on this list try their hand at asking intelligent questions in Vietnamese or Ewe.

Although I enjoy the humanistic aspect of listserves, I'm irritated when someone takes up bandwidth on the whole list just to tell someone to read the friggin manual. The folks who feel compelled to scorn others in front of the whole group are just trying to look kewl at someone else's expense. That's so high school.

I'm here for PHP. I love the wit, humor, intelligence, and passion of the list debates, but I'm working my butt off earning my living writing software and simply don't have time to scroll down through some enormous unsnipped quote simply to find "thanks!" or "you weenie!" at the bottom.

This rant is off-topic (call it "admin" if you're feeling generous) but I'm posting it to the whole list just because I think noise is a chronic problem on this listserve in particular. Please, if you just want to thank someone or tell them they're a donkey, do so privately. Serve us up the PHP!

Rushed, grumpy defender of the underdog,

Paul
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