On Wed, 6 Dec 2017 04:54 pm, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 4:27 PM, km <srikrishnamo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Remember that you are wasting time of lakhs of python subscribers by >> asking such dumb questions being tech students. You people can Google and >> watch movies / songs online and you can't find how to download and install >> python ? That's ridiculous! >> > > This attack is unwarranted. Please don't set fire to people simply > because they asked a question like this.
I'm going to defend KM (srikrishnamohan) -- his comments were not "an attack", they are a well-deserved criticism of a *tech student* who apparently made zero effort to find out how to download Python before asking others to do it for him. I'm sorry for the length of this post. It is trivially easy to sink the boots in and tell KM off for his blunt criticism of the OP's request. But in the face of this hostile environment (out of the nine people who responded to this thread, no fewer than three have piled onto KM to tell him off), it isn't so easy to get through the message of why we shouldn't always coddle people asking questions like that asked by the OP, and why KM's response was tough but fair. It's not enough to merely shout back "No, you're wrong!", hence the length of this reply. Its been a while since I've seen anyone here link to "How to ask questions the smart way": http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html and quote this: When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these things [try to find an answer] first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge and wasting people's time. (And more importantly: *you might learn something* by trying to solve your own problem.) And yes, I'm aware of the irony of me taking this position only a couple of posts after I asked the group to run some code for me without explaining why I couldn't run it myself.[1] The difference is, I have many years of answering other people's questions, I'm well known here, and I have a proven track record of not being a lazy sponge. But if somebody wants to take me to task for not explicitly stating why I wasn't running the code myself, I will preemptively take it in good grace and accept the criticism. Mea culpa. How likely is it that somebody who is tech-savvy enough to sign up and post to the Python-List mailing list is not savvy enough to have heard of google or to have thought of search terms "download Python"? https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=download%20python We're not talking about a young child, or some other barely computer literate person, but somebody studying for a Bachelor of Technology in India. Offering criticism is not attacking somebody. Not even tough criticism. And if you are thinking that it is, well, consider the beam in your own eye before the mote in KM's. You have just "attacked" (criticised) KM quite harshly, accusing him of making an "unwarranted" attack (I think it was very warranted), and using a metaphor which has particular cultural and colonial associations in India and neighbouring countries which we Westerners should be wary of making without good cause.[2] When somebody mildly breaches social norms, even the norms of a tech forum, mild shaming is often an effective method of enforcement. I'm not saying that the OP should be doxxed, his family and employer harassed, ripped apart on social media, but KM telling him off for wasting people's time seems fair to me. We can assume that the OP isn't a two year old. He should know better, and we ought to expect more from him. Its not a crime if he doesn't, but we don't have to molly-coddle him either. Consider your bible: a soft answer turns away wrath. But the bible never says that the wrath wasn't justified in the first place. KM is clearly angry at the OP's behaviour, hence his strong words. We should balance our concern about driving away newbies like the OP with some concern about the justified anger at needy, entitled, demanding people who take, take, take and never give back. "Smart Questions" (above) is not just good advice, it is also a set of social norms, and the OP violated them. And again, consider your own beam: what you are complaining about KM doing to the OP, is exactly what you, Ethan and others are attempting to do to KM. You consider KM's actions to have violated *your* social norm of "be nice" and consequently you are trying to shame KM into changing his behaviour to meet those norms, by chastising him and telling him off for supposedly attacking the OP, for being condescending, for being hateful. Ironically, it appears that both KM and the OP are newbies. Aren't we supposed to be more welcoming to newbies? > You can be far more courteous > than this, even if you refuse to help. Particularly, the "you people" > sounds like a blanket statement, which is almost certainly not useful > to the discussion. I think that given both posters appear to be Indian, perhaps there's some cultural baggage that we outsiders aren't privy too. I might guess that it could have something to do with the (allegedly) high incidence of academic dishonesty and cheating amongst India's students, many students feeling that they are entitled to pass courses without doing any work or studying. http://beta.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-c1-india-cheating-20140416-m-story.html You (and a few others) have "attacked" (criticised) someone who shows signs of being concerned about the quality of discussion in this forum, while encouraging somebody who shows signs of possibly becoming an entitled, needy, demanding Help Vampire: http://www.skidmore.edu/~pdwyer/e/eoc/help_vampire.htm Now to be fair to the OP, Jyothiswaroop Reddy, may not realise he is breaking a social norm for a tech group, perhaps due to cluelessness, inexperience, or a lifetime of entitlement where his every need has been done for him. I'm not saying he should be shunned. But a swift kick up the (virtual) behind is a wake-up call. KM's comments were tough but fair: Jyothiswaroop *is* wasting people's time with a simple problem that he should be capable of solving himself, or at least making an attempt to solve it himself, and it doesn't require much nous to google for "Download Python" before asking for help. In our urge to be inclusive, we forget that it is just basic simple politeness that before asking strangers for a favour, we should make an honest attempt to solve the problem ourselves. If you don't, but still expect others to solve your problems for you, that's a violation of some pretty deeply embedded cultural norms about social cheating (taking advantage of others without giving back). Those norms are so deeply embedded they might even be biological. I can completely understand KM's apparant anger. The bottom line is, I disagree that KM's posts were out of line and more worthy of chastisement than Jyothiswaroop's post. [1] I cannot compile Python 3.6 or better on any of the computers I have access to at the moment -- although it's probably time for me to try again in case those dependency problems have been fixed. [2] Given the historical practice of suttee (sati) and the questions it raises about colonial imperialism[3], as well as the still-current practice of dowry murder[4] and even more vicious crimes[5] in India, accusing KM of setting another person on fire (even metaphorically) is not something I'd do so casually. [3] http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/india/suttee.html [4] https://preview.tinyurl.com/y86vglvm [5] https://preview.tinyurl.com/hnaa29w -- Steve “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list