On Friday 20 February 2009 19:15, Raj Mathur wrote:
On Friday 20 Feb 2009, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 04:40:13PM +0530, Suhit Kelkar wrote: [snip]
re the thread discussion about silly questions: lots of people, esp. from our cultural/educational atmosphere *cannot* absorb knowledge except through a conversation. they simply cannot parse the written
Then perhaps they need to find alternate fora for learning? Email is definitely text based, as is IRC.
I have to agree with Suhit here to some extent: it takes quite some experience to be able to sift through all the links that a search engine gives you to find out the one relevant to /your/ specific problem, and many people just give up.
It takes effort, not experience. That is a very important metric to sift out lazy AHs. The ones who give up so easily are best left to sink and helpers can concentrate on the ones really trying. I am subscribed to several other very tech mailing lists. On everyone of these you have 99.9% INDIANS (No i am not being racist) asking the most idiotic and easily answered by google questions. BTW many of those questions are not about linux but fat file systems. Also the ones who did get some non RTFM response with the first post, continue to post in the same vein, without doing their homework. The disease is become pandemic on that list now.
Whereas if you ask on a mailing list then people can interact with you to figure out the precise problem, and offer you a precise solution.
A Mailing list is your fallback, not your first line of defence.
I'd do some mild ribbing too, but then a combination of mild ridicule and a hint on how to find the real solution is more likely to make the searcher a good searcher than ridicule by itself :)
Good for those who can muster the patience. As for me it will be an RTFM post if not worse. BTW one of the oldies on a list replied to a RTFM thus
Hi all, i just procured a copy of Kamasutra. After reading it back to back, i did not find a answer. However i spent several pleasurable hours thereafter. Thanks for recommending THAT manual.