RE: *** ADMIN: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Scott,

IMHO, you got this one "extremely right"...!  Which is why I clog up the
digest with the redundancy...  It's worth a second read, again IMHO.
Especially:

| d) People on the midrange.com mailing lists tend to be significantly
|    nicer to those who ask inappropriate/vague questions than those on
|    the misc other lists.   But, at the same time are the ones most
|    likely to complain about someone being "Rude" or "uncalled for".

(I assume you meant "But some, at the same time...")

The key to getting good idea flow is finding the proper balance of
tolerance.  People a far less likely to ask good questions, and supply good
answers, as long as some are gonna attack others for their lack of
knowledge, netiquette, etc.

This is the point where ESR is completely deluded:  "What we are,
unapologetically, is hostile to people..."  This attitude comes through
quite clearly in a lot of people's writings, not just ESR.  These same folks
want good ideas to flow, but apparently don't see that the opposite of this
deluded attitude, the one that allows for tolerance of other's
short-comings, is a necessary ingredient to creating idea flow.

This seems to be a completely and totally deluded and mistaken belief:  That
you need to be hostile to people, to be a good coder.  People are like
computers, yet unlike computers.

JMHO.


jt


PS  (Hope ya stay out of caves, as they're not all they're cracked up to
be...  Just ask that piece of bin...;-)

| -----Original Message-----
| [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Scott Klement
| Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 1:41 AM
|
| On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, David Gibbs wrote:
| >
| > I found this while surfing the other day... I think it really
| applies here:
| >
| > http://www.tuxedo.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html
| >
|
| It _definitely_ applies here.
|
| ESR seems to go a little overboard in some of his statements in this
| article.  But, by and large he's on target here...  Here are some of my
| observations:
|
| a) About 50% of the messages that I reply to, I don't feel that I've been
|    given enough information to fully understand the question.   And that's
|    just the ones that I bother to reply to :)
|
| b) It feels like 25% of the messages posted to RPG400-L have nothing
|    whatsoever to do with RPG.  (Though, that's not based on any actual
|    counting of messages, it's just based on how I feel about it)
|    Of these, nearly half have a comment that says "I know this is
|    off-topic, but..."
|
| c) At least once a day a message is posted to one of the mailing lists I
|    follow that I've already answered at some point in the past.
|
| d) People on the midrange.com mailing lists tend to be significantly
|    nicer to those who ask inappropriate/vague questions than those on
|    the misc other lists.   But, at the same time are the ones most
|    likely to complain about someone being "Rude" or "uncalled for".
|
|
| In the past week I've received private E-mails:
|
| a) In a language that I don't speak, asking me RPG questions.
|
| b) Saying "how do I debug my program?" without specifying the platform,
|     language, or type of program he's debugging (much less specifics
|     about the application)
|
| c) Warning me that someone that I don't know is on vacation, and that
|     he/she will get back to me as soon as he/she returns.  (I'm sure
|     everyone on this list gets these)
|
| d) From someone I don't know saying  "Your program crashed when I ran it.
|     Can you help me?"  Without specifying which program, much less the
|     circumstances of the crash.
|
| Some times I just want to disconnect all of my computers and move to a
| cave in Antarctica. :)