paul allen's link

[Paul L. Allen]

ChuckDock writes: 

> Paul, I went to that link you posted. It had very valid points about
> proper list posting in a hackers circle.

They're valid everywhere you go for free help.  If you want somebody to
help you for free, you don't make that person work harder than necessary.
You don't make that person teach you stuff you SHOULD have been able to
figure out for yourself.  You hang around after you have got your answers
to help others to pay back the help you got and to lighten the load. 

This is called courtesy.  If you're not prepared to pay money for
commercial support the least you can do is pay respect to the people
you want to give you free help by doing the blindingly obvious thing
of reading the documentation and FAQs first to see if they have the
answer.  That leaves the list free for people who have real problems
not caused by their own laziness and which are not covered in the
documentation or FAQs. 

> I'm not a "rules" person, who cares if someone posts a stupid question.
> If someone else wants to answer it, making life a little easier then why 
> should that affect you?

And if I want to answer it in a way that teaches somebody the logical
steps he OUGHT to have followed all by himself in the hope that next
time he will at least make SOME effort to find the answer to a simple
question before asking here, then why should that affect YOU?  More to
the point, why has everyone who posted here criticising me tried to
dictate what I may post when I have not tried to dictate what others
may post?  All I do is give what I feel to be an appropriate answer
and do not try to tell others that they do not have the same right. 

> By you bitching about questions that people ask, people get intimidated
> and then stop asking questions. 

That is your conjecture.  But people rarely read the list before joining
to ask their questions, and rarely search the archives before asking
their questions (because if they knew they ought to do that they'd also
know they ought to read the docs, the FAQ, etc. before asking questions). 

> What may be a dumb question to you could be useful to a other people on 
> this list.

Learning to read the documentation FIRST would be useful to other people
on this list.  Learning to try to solve a problem for yourself first
would be useful to other people on this list. 

[from the link]
> This guide will teach you how to ask questions in a way that is likely 
> to get you a satisfactory answer.

And was the original question asked in a way that even remotely matched
even one of the pieces of advice about how the question should be
phrase?  No.  Was it asked in a way that matched almost all the pieces
of advice on how the question should NOT be phrased?  Yes. 

> Whatever...I don't feel like this forum has to abide by "the world of 
> hackers" Were just regular folks helping each other.

This may come as a shock to you, but the people with a deep understanding
of Nagios are........ hackers.  You should also have read on that web
page about what happens to lists which adopt attitudes like yours - the
hackers disappear and leave it to the "regular folks" (who don't know
much) to amuse themselves by guessing at answers. 

> This part of the paper kinda paints a picture of you that I can relate
> to!

Actually, I can do normal human interaction with normal humans.  It's
the lazy sponges who get different treatment. 

> I'm sure your going to pick this all apart with your "my message" 
> then your smart ass answer,

Sure I am.  How about this quote from that web page: 

 While just muttering RTFM is sometimes justified when replying to
 someone who is just a lazy slob, a pointer to documentation (even if
 it's just a suggestion to Google for a key phrase) is better. 

Marc incorrectly accused me of giving an RTFM response.  Although I
did not give the guy the name of the library he was missing, I gave
him enough information that he could have found it after he had done
a little digging - far less digging than he ought to have done before
he started asking here. 

> how about getting over it and just moving on....

How about taking your own advice, going back in a time machine and
stopping the post you just made to prove that you have got over it and
moved on?  Or, if you really still believe I need your advice, use the
time machine to go back and send your advice just to me instead of the
whole list. 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support 



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