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On 28/07/2013 19:55, Martijn Grooten wrote:
From my POV I'm nowhere near as experienced as most of you with Linux, but I'm happy to share what little I do know - not just on Linux of course. I agree with bad apple that there is a difference between the question that makes you think 'What on earth are you on about?' and the type where you recognise that what is being asked is a genuine inquiry that someone new to Linux may not know. My previous occupation in Technical Support has, I think, put me on a good footing for distinguishing between the two, in fact I often had customers say to me 'You must think I'm stupid', to which I replied 'Not at all I'm paid to know this, you're not.' [1]On Sun, 28 Jul 2013, bad apple wrote:So, after some due reflection, considering how impossible it is to accurately draw a line between 'idiotic simplistic question that should never have been asked' and 'incredibly simplistic question honestly asked by the inexperienced' I have come to the conclusion that I need to change my mind. I'm not egotistical enough to believe I don't make mistakes, and that was one of them.:-)I think this is yet another example where Postel's Law ("be liberal on what you receive and strict on what you send") applies: try to make some effort finding an answer to your question before posting it to the list, but try not to be too strict if others ask a question that can easily be found through Google.(It is also good to keep in mind that it can be easy to overestimate the ease with which an answer can be found through Google by someone who knows very little on the subject.)I'm still firmly of the opinion that people owe it to themselves to do due diligence though - it's not hard to google things before asking for help, the worst that can happen is it confuses you more, in which case it is worth mentioning that you've at least tried. Kind of like going to a foreign country and at least trying your inept linguistic skills on the natives - they'll laugh at you before replying in decent English, but they'll appreciate the effort, no matter how hapless it is. My moderate French and terrible Japanese are a case in point.I like this example.Mind you, while I always make an effort to use their language when speaking to the natives here, no one has ever bothered to reply in Dutch. :-)Martijn.
That being said, I can't abide lazy people who expect to be spoonfed, and again I agree with bad apple. If someone asked 'How do I do X?' where X is very simple and shows no sign of having tried to work it out, my answer may well be to look it up on Google and furnish them with the url. If they they come back and say 'I tried that but Y happened' then fair enough they need more detailed help. If on the other hand someone posts and says 'I'm trying to do A, and I followed the instructions at B, C and D from Googling, but the result was E' and perhaps they quote an error message or chunk of a log then I will instantly recognise that this is someone who will benefit more from the help because they're willing to make an effort and they're more liable to remember how it got fixed. (Slight segue; this reminds me of in TS before I was promoted to Senior Tech. I'd started making noises that every time I asked the Senior Techs for ideas they couldn't suggest anything more than I had already tried. Voila, suddenly I was a Senior Tech).
BTW the above is not intended to suggest I will reply 'RTFM!' to anyone who asks for help, simply that it would be nice if there was some sign they *had* at least tried to read it, if ultimately they didn't understand what it said.
Julian[1] The gent who was told by a colleague to right click on the mouse, and did so with a pen - 'write 'click'' - is an exception. Sadly that is not apocryphal.
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