On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 14:32 -0500, David Farning wrote: > On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 20:08, David Farning <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 1:54 AM, Ishan Bansal <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> Hi > >>> > >>> I am working on the ticket http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2210. > >>> > >>> To solve the above bug i am thinking of clearing the text in the text to > >>> be > >>> translate box when ever the language to be translated is being changed. > >>> Please provide suggestion on any better approach to deal with this bug. > >> > >> Over the last month this list has seen a significant increase in > >> requests for pointers. > >> > >> Asking questions is an healthy part of learning, but asking for > >> 'pointers' is _not_ going to be particularly helpful. It shifts the > >> effort to the person answering the question rather then the person > >> asking the question. Effectively asking questions is an art. Asking > >> question is so important that Eric Raymond, author of the Cathedral > >> and the Bazaar, has written and maintained an article about how to ask > >> questions the smart way at > >> http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html . > >> > >> I strongly suggest reading the article. The time spent learning how > >> to ask questions the smart way... and asking questions the smart way > >> will pay for itself very quickly. Questions asked the smart way will > >> generally get quicker responses and better answers. > >> > >> Two additional points > >> -- If you are new to the list please clearly describe 1) What you > >> know, 2) What you don't know, 3) and what you think you have to learn > >> to solve your problem. This provides the person answering the > >> question a sense of scope. > > > > This is very well put, lately I have felt like I would need to explain > > most I know about software engineering in order to give an useful > > reply. > > And if anyone feels dumb expressing what they don't know..... Please > note that I just committed one of the biggest mistakes in mailing list > manners:( I hijacked this thread without reseting the subject. We > all make mistakes and we all get peer reviewed.
Besides all the above, to which I agree, we seem to have also the opposite problem: a lot of people in our community are afraid to ask questions on public mailing lists -- no matter how dumb or smart. It's not a language problem or a technical problem, it's really a cultural problem. I think there are a number of different factors: 1) Introversion: a lot of good engineers are naturally shy 2) Public image: employees and contractors may be afraid their posts could compromise the image of their organization 3) NDA: some engineers may be explicitly forbidden by their organization to talk publicly about their job 4) Social fear: sometimes people respond aggressively or sarcastically to newcomers who aren't familiar with the netiquette. 5) Force of habit: when they know who can answer a question, people often "forget" to cc the mailing list. 6) Unawareness: grasping why public communication is so crucial in a FLOSS community may time some time to developers who have been working in proprietary shops. As a result, this list has over 500 subscribers and only a tiny fraction of them have ever posted to it. Every day, I get plenty of questions by email and irc that could have been posted publicly. I bet the same is true for other Sugar/OLPC veterans. When this happens, we should gently encourage them to prefer public communication. I reserve the stronger signals -- such as refusing to answer the question until it's posted publicly -- for those who are repeatedly ignoring this advice. I'm not running a free technical support line. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
