On 2/11/06, Dinesh Joshi dinesh.a.joshi@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday 10 February 2006 20:43, Mrugesh Karnik wrote:
On Friday 10 February 2006 19:29, Rony Bill wrote:
- If a member asks for a solution that requires him/her to refer
to the manual, instead of saying "rtfm" or "Ever heard of google" or "Don't you have access to google", he is simply given another preset phrase " This problem can be solved by refering to the manual and even searching google for it. If you still face problems, then please post a report on what you did so far and at what point are you facing problems".
I would also add some link to the documentation if I know it. Some people want to read the documentation, but they're just not good at finding it.
I had this incident in the #linux-india channel, where I asked for the time of that Mark Shuttleworth's meet. Some fellow asked me to Google for it, even when he knew the time. Moreover commenting that I should learn to find stuff myself. I wonder.. why is it a problem to answer such a simple query as that than to make me spend some time Googling for a perfectly simple answer available at hand?
The two things are not comparable. But anyway that n00b deserved to be flamed. It's not that people will ask a newbie to RTFM or Google for queries which have straightforward answers _BUT_ people do ask the newbie to show some attempt to solve his/her problem. I mean it doesn't take a genius to just stick in - kppp configuration linux - keywords to find thousands, if not millions of articles, on the subject!
Look at it this way. Say some person asks a question to which you know the answer. But you tell him to read the documentation instead. The person should have read the documentation first, true, but when he can find the answer much easily, why should he be made to go the long way? In a way, doesn't this list act as a source of documentation? I mean, answer the question if you can and also point him to the documentation for future reference. If after that he still
Read my above reply. Remember, we can't keep on answering the same question over and over and over. It's too annoying. A very good example is - "How do I access my windows drives?". I think I have answered it a million times already ( not here but IRC, Forums, in-person, personal emails, phone calls!! )
Dude dont answer if u think its been asked over and over again. But by posting a reply that puts him off, ur not any favor to the community either. I know its probably one of the most written about stuff on the net and there should be no problem in finding a solution by searching for it, still i dont see any reason why we need to reply with a "heard of google" kinda thing. I think its best not to reply if u feel like that.