[ale] Insolence of those asking for FREE help on public lists

[Joe Knapka]

Granted that the answer to any given question is (nearly always)
in the FM, that still presents a problem. The sheer volume of
documentation that one must sometimes wade through in order to
answer a simple question can itself be quite daunting, even
for experienced users (I say this having run Linux nearly
continuously since early 1992, kernel 0.90). A question that
might take a guru 5 minutes of research to answer could involve
a marathon 3-day docfest for a newbie, and you can be a near-guru
"over here" (i.e. C/C++. Tcl, glibc, IPmasq) but a rank amateur
"over there" (i.e. Apache, Perl, NFS). Almost always,
the most efficient way to answer a question is to find
someone who's answered it before. That doesn't excuse impolite
behavior, but IMO it does somewhat excuse the actual
act of posting such questions.

Of course, it certainly pays to search the list archives (I
admit this is a lesson I have only recently taken to heart).
Possibly it would be a good idea to include a link to the
ALE archive at the end of each ALE message, if majordomo can
do that.

Wasn't there a thread a few months ago about an "ALE FAQ"?
I recall that someone offered to host such a page, but I
never saw what happened after that.

-- Joe

Fletch wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "John" == John Mills <jmills at tga.com> writes:
> 
>     John> [whine about newbieQ's elided]
> 
>     John> Thanks for sharing that. Feel better now?
> 
>     John> Answering those questions is always _voluntary_, or are you
>     John> upset that folks _do_ answer so beginners can become
>     John> experienced users. Go back to your paying customers.
> 
>         I don't think newbie questions per se are the problem.  I
> don't think questions from rude newbies are the problem.  The problem
> as I see it is that there seem to be an increasing amount of questions
> from newbies that would be solved by one simple thing:
> 
>         RTFM.
> 
> <purl> Teach a man to fish and he may feed himself.  Give a man a fish
>        and he'll ask you if you could please cook it for him while
>        you're at it.
> 
> --
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-- 
*** Joseph Knapka ***
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
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