Sometime Today, lawrence_d@sifycorp.com assembled some asciibets to say:

I agree with the whole fishing adage, but that would mean ...U dont

Hi Lawrence, please fix your line length. Configure your mail client to wrap lines for outgoing mails at about 74 characters.

need to give a direct reply to a simple Q, but atleast point the guy in the right direction to get his ans...and not totally ignore it all

Pointing to your favourite search engine/docs once should be sufficient. There is no need to do it over and over, and definitely no need to waste time if someone has shown no attempt at self resolution at all.

together. After all he might not have the time or bandwidth to go run

And I'm sure all people hanging out on this list have nothing but free time and bandwidth to go searching for solutions to the poster's problems. Many times, we haven't come across the problem either, but after a simple search, we find it. The person with the problem can do that too. People shouldn't be here to do charity work. There are other places where there is a greater need for charity. On this list, we exchange information, ask for help only when everything we've tried has failed. The hope is that in time, each person will need to resort less and less to posting queries and be able to offer more solutions.

queries around the place and hence had to turn to this LUG as a last resort.

If this is the last resort, then great, but anyone posting a question will have to show that he's at least tried something before asking. Not only does that tell us that he's willing to learn, but it can also eliminate solutions that he's already tried, or even find an immediate solution given output he's received from earlier attempts.

HTH.

Philip