Ralf G�nthner wrote:
>
> My 2 cents:
>
> >> Dave Sill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 17.05.2000 16.25 Uhr >>>
>
> >not as "How would I know?". We deal with people whose experiences and
> >abilities are all over the spectrum, from complete newbie to kernel
> >hacker, and we don't know where you fall.
>
> Based on past experience: Most of the readers of this list seem to lean
> toward the developer's side and when someone who's "only" a qmail-admin
> as a side-effect of his main job, like myself, (we use qmail purely as a
> relay system in our DMZ, because it's secure) I often get short, cryptic
> answers from a programmer's perspective.
>
> The vast majority of my knowledge pertains to IT security, but I wouldn't
> expect anyone asking me for advice to be familiar with the ins-and-outs
> of the TCP/IP suite. I explain a new term before throwing it at the
> questioner. The same attitude would make this list friendlier at times
> ("put it in a .qmail file") Of course I don't encourage not reading any
> FAQs or man pages but shooting all questions to the list instead.
I think the reason repeated rtfm-style questions are so frustrating
(for me, anyway) is that qmail itself has some of the best "newbie"
documentation I think I've ever seen - it's all of the "do this,
then this, then this" variety - which was extremely friendly to me
the first time I installed qmail. Whether it was DJB, or whoever
wrote it went to great pains to aim it straight at the newbie. I
didn't even need Dave's excellent LWQ the first time I installed
it - and that reflects far more on the person that wrote the
INSTALL.* files than my mediocre prowess as an admin.
Eric
