Re: Appreciate Midrange Forum.

John,

> However I would know below few things
>
> Is this forum is only for experienced person?
> Is this forum is only for a particular country?

As a frequent and long time Midrange.com subscriber I welcome your input and participation here. The forum is not specifically for any skill level, experience level, or nationality. While it's not specifically for English speaking people, it IS a requirement to use English here or the quantity of answers will be, um, "low" Unless you ask an SQL question in German, then Birgitta will help you. :-)

> I just started my career in AS/400 and most of the queries which I
> ask looks stupid to experience persons. Well we all started our
> career at some point of time so I started it now ..that's it

There are no "Stupid Questions" BUT we always appreciate forum etiquette. Some of the things that help NO MATTER your skill or experience level:

1) DO attempt to search for the answer before you simply post a question. Visit www.midrange.com and use the search links there. MANY of the questions you might have are not new and have been answered before. In fact I personally have searched for answers that I knew were out there and found answers that *I* MYSELF posted! (Getting old is like that.) "The Google' knows a lot as well, and believe it or not the IBM infocenter actually has some answers, really!

2) DO start a new thread when you ask a question. Don't do a reply to a previous note even if you change the Subject and text. Many headers will be copied and that's not good for certain views in the various mail programs.

3) DO RE-READ your questions and consider: "Have I provided enough information here that my question will be both understood, and plausibly answered." This does two important things: a) It makes you think about the question and the needed information that may in some cases reveal the answer to you and b) respect the list members time by showing you've put effort into a good question.

4) DO NOT use the list simply as your reference manual.

Realize that you can be a list reader or 'lurker' and simply absorb knowledge. You can be a 'contributor' and answer questions. You can be a 'learner' that asks good questions that educate yourself and others on the list. What you don't want to be is a 'taker' who only asks questions that are poorly formatted, poorly researched, and simply consume 'bandwidth'.

When you reach the point where you feel you can answer questions that's great but DO see if the question has already been addressed. Too often the same question gets 10 or more of the same answer. Now if you can provide additional clarification or understanding that's great but 20 copies of "Yes" isn't very helpful or welcome.

Also when replying spend a few moments to be clear with what you copy. Simply leaving 100% of whatever thread is there is difficult to follow and wastes space and time.

If you ask a question that is poorly researched or phrased or detailed you may get an answer like this:

> From: Eric Lehti <elehti@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: RE: JDE Software Installation.
>
> Do you see a message on your screen that says something is broken?
> Maybe your implementation team's spending $2 million on JD Edwards was
> the wrong decision. Maybe you should switch to SAP, which can be
> installed for $5 million.

In this case your original question was not clear to us and was akin to "How do I change the transmission in my Toyota Prius?" There is far FAR too much to know to even begin to provide a correct answer. To such a question there are several potential responses:

a) No response. No time for or didn't understand the question.
b) Further questions for clarification. You got some of these.
c) Wize guy cracks. See above :-)

Understand that even the wise guy cracks provide you some feedback! The feedback is 'Oh Oh. I didn't write a good question that time!'

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com