On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Paul wrote: > But if we're talking advocacy, I must point out that as a newbie, my > biggest problem was finding out where to look to *find* the manual. > Also, when I was trying to get this system working ~now~, (the > "out-of-the-box" problem we keep seeing), it was frequently important > that I get answers quickly, and though I hated to bother the list with > mundanities, it was a lot faster to ask (and get a response amid the > RTFM's) than to read through a dozen documents to find where the > information I needed, especially when it was ditributed among three or > four of them and I needed to understand the relationships before it > made any sense..... Well, your pressing schedule is your problem. If you're going to tackle a new technology you have to allow learning time. I'm all for people politely providing pointers as to what documentation a newbie should read (like "go to the guide from perl.apache.org and read the section on configuring"). But expecting people to then sit down and walk you through the commands necessary to get the install done is just not going to happen. If you need that sort of support, pay someone to do it for you. I highly doubt that this is any different in the Java world. Certainly, better packaging/smarter installers can help with this too. > and friendly attitude towards (yes, even stupid) questions, I remind us > all that one "RTFM and quit wasting our time, jerk" response will sour > someone on the ENTIRE language, and that the someone might always have > been the next Bill Gates looking for a tool to sponsor.... There's nothing wrong with RTFM and a pointers towards the correct books/sites/files, as long as its polite. > Explaining how to access an entry in a hash isn't worth a lot of > people's time -- but I see those people occasionally spend the time to > point that out. While we're at it, let's always take the extra few > seconds to be *nice* about it, and at least make a token effort while > we mention that there's a better forum for that at [EMAIL PROTECTED] I think answering entirely off-topic questions instead of just politely asking the questioner to go elsewhere sets a bad precendent along the lines of "those mod_perl folks know Perl really well so I'll ask my regex question there." Keep in mind that while we're all for advocacy of mod_perl, eventually a person's support needs may reach a point where they really need to start thinking about paying for it. -dave /*================== www.urth.org We await the New Sun ==================*/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
