On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, David Brodbeck wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Robert Adkins II [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > > I have read a few more of your responses. It appears that you > > believe wholeheartedly that your more advanced questions are going > > unanswered simply because of the volume of lower skilled questions. > > I see it go both ways. > > The really "interesting" problems that uncover new bugs in the Samba code > generally get a lot of attention. (Sometimes forwarding them to > samba-technical can be productive, incidentally.)
Obviously, any real bugs need to be fixed asap. Many bugs are NOT interesting - just a right royal pain! > The easy problems generally get answered eventually, too, even if it's just > with a pointer to the right section of the manual. I can not speak for anyone else, but my approach is to look carefully at the posting (typically about 10 seconds). I answer if: - the user is new and shows they have tried to solve the problem - the user is experienced and made an obvious error - some else's help is wrong - the problem is not well documented either in samba code or through the mailing list archives - the problem pertains to something I can contribute something to I do NOT answer if the answer can be readily found. This demonstrates that the enquirer is lazy and wants to abuse my time and energy. > It's the ones in between, the tricky problems that are difficult to work > out, but probably not actual bugs, that sometimes tend to languish > unanswered. You will note that sometimes I do NOT provide the answer, but I do ask a question that contains the answer. Example: -------- Recently someone who had a clear name resolution problem was not using WINS. They did not want to use WINS: I do NOT have time to educate every subscriber who does NOT WANT to use WINS as to it's benefits in a NetBIOS over TCP/IP environment. Some of my help in this area has gone on for over 10 interchanges - and I am tired of that. So I simply sent back a reply that asked "Why are you sure you do not want to use WINS?" - from that point forward it's up to the recipient to do some more home work. >From my analysis of my January respsonses the average time I spent per reply was around 13 minutes. Most replies take about 1-2 minutes, but a few too MUCH longer. Several took over 1 hour. I do carefully take note of problem areas and then try to capture useful hints and answers. These get fed back into documentation. Most of the new documentation is going into Samba-3.0.0. Hopefully the 3.0.0 release will set a new standard in helpful documentation. We need to be realistic though: the new documentation will largely close gaps in older samba functionality. It will take a while to prepare and include this same level of utility in documentation pertaining to new features. This is a slow but beneficial process and is a key reason why I often ask people who have solved a problem to document their solution and to contribute it. Unfortunately, most people we help do NOT contribute back in this manner (but human nature is like that). - John T. -- John H Terpstra Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba