Good day, I would agree that there certainly are some questions that deserve a bit more thought before they are posted to the list. Witness, for example, posters who respond to their own question 10 minutes later with "Never mind, I solved it".
However, I don't think anyone is in a position to say whether a question is stupid or not. Sometimes there is a simple way to do something, but it escapes the poster who is otherwise a good programmer. Or, sometimes, it's just because other readers don't read the question properly, and think it's a lot simpler than it really is. I know I, on _many_ occasions, have posted "I need to do foo, and A won't work because X, and B would be too much overhead because Y" and have people answer with my own rejected solution "Do A, you newbie" , obviously without even reading the entirety of the message. With apologies to Bart, I will point out that the question that Bart quoted is a perfectly valid question with non-trivial solutions. The original poster is well aware of how "if" statements work, but that appeared to be lost in Bart's reading. Does using Javascript to redirect a user to another page have to do anything with PHP? In this case ... yes! The situation described by the original poster would be something that only a PHP programmer (or ASP, etc.) would run into, where a user has to make a decision whether or not to redirect a user halfway though a page. Where would be the best place to ask for advice on how to do that? Is this PHP mailing list perhaps not the MOST suitable place for something like that? Yes, for a user to succeed with a programming language it's important that they not use a mailing list as a crutch, and be told to examine the documentation when appropriate (especially documentation as good as it is with PHP). But I, for one, would much rather have a friendly community such as this one to encourage and support the use of PHP for all. My two cents CND (one cent USD). ============================ Darren Gamble Planner, Regional Services Shaw Cablesystems GP 630 - 3rd Avenue SW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2P 4L4 (403) 781-4948 -----Original Message----- From: Bart Brinkmann [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 3:25 PM To: Andrew; Nick Wilson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PHP] RTFM > no such thing as a stupid question... I strongly disagree. Refer to the topic: "RTFM". A stupid question is one that is posted to this message board before the poster bothers to do a shred of independent thinking. I've seen way too many of these questions come through this list. The MySQL list was about the same. It was more of a bother to read than it was a benefit. This list is about the same quality. Every once in a long while something useful comes along, but unfortunately their burried underneath 100 other postings of lazy newbies asking questions like *scrolls about 10 messages down* "How to send url on if statement". 1) if statements are surely covered on php.net 2) It is not a php-specific question 3) If you don't understand how "if statements" work, use that 8lb mass on your shoulders - RTFM Just my $0.02 USD. /bart -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
