------------------------------<snip>----------------------
Tech support should answer ANY question asked of it.
But IBM-Main is not some sort of commercial, for-pay technical support
organization. *No one* comes to this list with some sort of legal,
commercial or moral _right_ to assistance.
-------------------------------<unsnip>----------------------------
100% agreement, as far as it goes. He should also realize that some
responses might not comprise a complete solution to his problem. Each
shop is different and a solution that works great in one shop may be
inappropriate in another. Like the man says, "YMMV".
----------------------------<snip>--------------------------------
This all starts to remind me of what my dad said about the average
Unix newsgroup, some 25-30 years ago: "If you ask a question, you
get several responses: some flaming you for not knowing the answer
in the first place, some flaming you for asking the question the
way you asked it, and some flaming you for trying to do it that
way in the first place. None of them actually make any effort to
answer the question or help in any way."
I sure hope this list isn't headed in that direction. We're
adults, we should be able to act like it.
Eric Steven Raymond has written an excellent FAQ called "How To Ask
Questions The Smart Way":
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
From this article:
<quote>
Before You Ask
--------------
Before asking a technical question by e-mail, or in a newsgroup, or on
a website chat board, do the following:
1. Try to find an answer by searching the archives of the forum you
plan to post to.
2. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
3. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
4. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
5. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
6. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
7. If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the
source code.
When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these
things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy
sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have
learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for
people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.
</quote>
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect anyone asking for help from
this group to have first done a little research on their own.
-------------------------------<unsnip>---------------------------
I agree that the questioner needs to take some reasonable steps before
consulting the list, but given the complexity of IBM's documentation
these days, I don't believe it's unreasonable to ask for help in
learning where to look. This is one reason I like BookManager so much;
its search engine seems to be FAR more efficient than Library Manager or
the various PDF-related tools.
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