About newbie questions

[Marc Espie <Marc.Espie@liafa.jussieu.fr>]

I've got absolutely nothing against newbies... everyone DOES begin to learn
things at one point.

But, recently, I've seen a worrying shift in attitude. Like, asking the same
question again and again at very short intervals, or not thinking a question
through before posting it, or not making the effort to read the answer.

Here is an important clue: there are a lot of knowledgeable people ready to
answer questions that do read misc@. Put enough drivel in that list, and
you'll drive them away. 


Here is a second important clue: if you spend five seconds thinking a 
question thru, can you expect someone to spend more than five seconds thinking
the answer thru ?  

Ask yourself that question: is that what you truely want ?

misc@ is not intended to be a miracle cure. Spend five
minutes polishing your question, don't forget to give enough background (like,
what you tried that didn't work... see script(1) for providing complete logs)
and don't forget to say what documentation you looked at.

You should also regard RTFM with proper references as what it truely is:
developers who DO spend time writing documentation, specifically so that
they don't have to answer the same question again and again.

As for myself, I try to answer questions when I can, and when I have time
for it. I get easily annoyed by incomplete questions, or by people who don't
read what I answered. Why ? because I get the feeling I should have helped
someone else instead of wasting my time.

If you look very closely, you'll notice that fully justified questions will
very, very often result in a bug-fix, a documentation update, or a FAQ
rearrangement.
-- 
	Marc Espie		
|anime, sf, juggling, unicycle, acrobatics, comics...
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| `real programmers don't die, they just get out of beta'