Like all 'LISTS' the members are there to provide or solicit information, and it is like a club. Responding to posts to a list is seldom part of a job description.
There are rules for membership of the club. They may not be written down, but they do exist, and some have to be discovered by trial and error. One of the fundamental assumptions is that before posting a request for help the poster will have done as much as they possibly can to find the answer, and then post the question with documentation of what they have done and why they are in need of help. Posting an error message and asking what it means without further investigation is vastly different from posting a message with all the fields and some information about what happened before the message appeared, Unfortunately, some of the people that have joined the list recently seem to think that it is a replacement for a vendor support channel, and they don't provide nearly enough information. This just wastes the time of the people who are prepared to respond, and in the end they will just not respond unless they know what what they advise or recommend will use that information, and inevitably posters will get to be known by name. Posting a question or request for help to any list, but in this case to IBM-MAIN, does not entitle the poster to a response. If a person's posts just cause irritation, then they will not get a response, or if they do get a response and they ignore that response and continue to come back with the same question or request. In other words, if someone wants to learn from the experience of other people then need to respect those other people and not waste their time. Its not a question of whether someone works for an outsourcer or not, its a question of professional integrity. Two sides to that, someone wanting to learn must use published documentation of it they are able, go to courses. The potential responder needs to recognise that there is a problem at the moment around the world where the number of professionally responsible people is dwindling, and the incomers can't instantly learn what has taken 25 years to accumulate. And I am not going to comment on the irresponsible management class that got things into this potential mess. End of rant! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
