In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Gabor Szabo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This is a separate topic, but in my classes I noticed that a very > large proportion > of the students would not use any forum or mailing list to ask a question. > I guess this is somewhere in the 80-90% range of the students. > I am talking about engineers, QA people etc. I've noted the same thing, and I really don't blame them. Most of the people who frequent a forum are quite rude, elitist, and off-putting. It's a shame to see newbies treated so harshly, and I don't blame them from staying away. You really can't blame some poor soul for seeing a mailing list named "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" and interpreting that as a place to get help from Perl trainers. There isn't a lot of context in the name. Not one of the responses that I saw actaully tried to help the person, even by simply pointing them to the right place. Instead, the response put on the usual grand show for the regulars. As trainers, we know that people start at point A and it's our job to figure out where they want to go (even if they don't know themselves) then lead them there. We're certainly showing our inability to do that if we can't get over ourselves and simply say "Perhaps the folks over at learn.perl.org can help" and leave it at that. Let's not be assholes to newbies.
