On Fri, 20 Sep 2002, Mike Cronin wrote: > Mark, > > Just a clarification bud, I did not ask the off topic date question > yesterday, I got chewed out for responding with one of the first > answers. > > You stated, "Without some selective bashing this forum will lose
As Mark said, you're getting your Marks mixed up :-). (I guess that means you missed your Mark -- sorry :-). > focus." My point is just that, this morning this board lost all > valuable focus due to excessive bashing which I feel is more of a > detriment than off topic posting. > > I just think we should be careful about going off course due to a > simple off topic post. No, it wasn't a simple off-topic post. It was the dozen or so responses to that simple off-topic post. Multiplied by two. There is just no need for that. And it is irresponsible and uncourteous of the people asking the question *and* the people answering. > -----Original Message----- > From: A mailing list for discussion about Sun Microsystem's Java Servlet > API Technology. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of > Galbreath, Mark > Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 11:18 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Off Topic: Just a suggestion... > > > I believe the annoyance was more with the people who answered your question > without bothering to see if anybody had posted a previous (correct) answer. > Your question was trivial (and, in all fairness, could have been answered by > simply looking at the API or picking up a book like David Flanagan's "Java > In A Nutshell, 4th ed." (which every Java programmer should have), and I > think there were 12-15 answers (I was guilty as well, though I mistakenly > thought I was on the struts-user list). > > In short, you will get more people annoyed by asking trivial questions that > are easily answered by some cursory research than asking off-topic > questions. There have actually been some very good OT discussion on this > list over the years (I remember a discussion on design patterns that lasted > for days one year). In other words, intelligent, interesting discussion is > tolerated even if the topic is only marginally related to servlets. > > Of cource, Milt will probably disagree with me...he does on everything else. > ;-) > > Mark > > -----Original Message----- > From: Mike Cronin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 2:05 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Off Topic: Just a suggestion... > > > Hi all, > > I kept my trap shut yesterday after getting my butt chewed by responding to > an off topic question regarding date handling. I understand that this board > exists specifically for servlets and that we should keep the off topic > issues to a minimum, but after reviewing 20 posts of off topic, unhelpful > and offhanded comments this morning, I feel we should stick to answering any > question presented with as little overhead (i.e. slams and/or digs) as > possible. Even when the post is off topic, let's see if we can get an answer > to that programmer and move on. > > Thanks much, > > Mike Cronin Milt Epstein Research Programmer Integration and Software Engineering (ISE) Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff SERVLET-INTEREST". Archives: http://archives.java.sun.com/archives/servlet-interest.html Resources: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/external-resources.html LISTSERV Help: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/user/user.html
