"Yamijala, Kalyan" wrote:
> I guess there is no point in being rude to people.. This list is used for
> information sharing, nobody owns this list , and nobody has the right to
> tell people not to ask questions.
Can I give you some friendly advice? *Please* read the policies that relate to
this list -- they are published to everyone at least once a week in case you
didn't read the confirmation message when you joined :-). Being rude (or
better, being polite) is a two way street.
This list is for asking and answering questions about servlets. Everything else
(including dates and string formatting and JavaScript and JDBC drivers and all
that) is off topic, and not appropriate. There are other forums that address
those issues.
> I know it is good practice to go through
> the Archives, before asking questions. But you cannot enforce this, because
> there are always people ready to answer, however silly the question may be.
> I also know it is irritating to see all those small questions and the
> replies to it. But let me remind you ..my friend, all it takes is a key
> stroke to delete a message. And I guess you have to put up with things like
> this in open user lists and user groups.
>
> BTW.. I'm sorry if my message seemed rude to anybody.
>
Let me make it very clear why asking (and answering) off-topic questions is
counterproductive.
As anyone who recognizes my name will tell you, I'm one of the folks who knows
quite a bit about servlets :-). Coupled with that, my personality drives me to
want to share what I know, and to help people. Over the last few years, I have
answered hundreds (maybe even thousands?) of such questions.
But (there is always a but ...) my time available to do this is limited.
At the moment, I have more than 250 messages (just from the last two days) in my
SERVLET-INTEREST folder that I haven't read yet. Usually, I do that while
waiting for compiles, or having my first morning coffee, or whatnot. However, a
quick scan of the message headers says that well over 50% of these messages are
off topic. Even though I know the answers to most of the questions about JDBC
drivers and such, that is not why I'm here -- I want to share what I know about
building web apps with servlet and JSP technology.
As a result, over the last few months, and as the percentage of off topic
questions and answers has dramatically increased, I spend less and less time on
SERVLET-INTEREST. It simply takes too much time to scan and ignore the
off-topic stuff, so I don't even have time to notice the questions that can and
should be answered.
This is not what I want. This should not be what you want either.
The way to avoid that is to be polite to the folks like me, who *want* to answer
relevant questions. And that politeness revolves around respecting the rules of
the community in which we are participating here. Both asking, and answering,
off topic questions violates that principle of respect, and discourages high
quality exchanges about the single topic we all want to talk about, or we
wouldn't have joined in the first place.
Thanks for letting me pontificate a little, although I had to violate a personal
policy (to never respond to an off-topic post) to do it :-).
Craig McClanahan
====================
See you at ApacheCon Europe <http://www.apachecon.com>!
Session VS01 (23-Oct 13h00-17h00): Sun Technical Briefing
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Applications to Tomcat
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