Hi Richard, On Jan 26, 2008 5:18 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Although new to OSG, I am most certainly not new to software > engineering, nor how to do 3D graphics. I realize it is my own pride > that makes me feel patronized at times. This is not the first time I > have farted at the dinner table so to speak. I need to be better about > communicating that when I ask a vague question, I actually _am_ > looking for a vague answer that just points me towards where I should > be focusing my attention.
The problem which causes me great frustration is that vague questions are really just bad questions to answer. If someone is being vague how on earth are you supposed to know what answer they actually required. To answer a vague question you first have to start off by guessing all the possible interpretations of a vague question and then writing an essay on all that possible interpretations could cover. An precise question often just takes a second to understand and often a single line to explain. I can quickly reel off ten replies to these types of questions in five minutes, I can help ten people off on their way without having a great impact on my own schedules. Then we come across vague questions, they take much longer to understand and require a number of emails back and forth just to get the clarification about what on earth the poster is actually after or the problem they have. All of this takes a huge amount of time relative to the amount of time that sensible questions take, its also hard, it really takes it out of you trying to extract sense from such threads. Also if you are hard pressed for time it does have detrimental affect on mood when end up clearly wasting so much more of it than a topic deserves. So vague question not only don't get you a useful answer quickly, but they also are detrimental to others in the community as too much bandwidth and good will of those who are willing to try and help out in consumed. Consume too much time and goodwill and their end up being less time and goodwill to help others. So you don't need to get better at asking vague questions better, you just need to stop asking vague questions and learn how to ask more precise questions. I know this is hard, a vague question is easy to write off the cuff and send out, being precise is much harder - but its much much more effective and far less detrimental to others. Robert. _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
