[ic] what is help // what is not help

[Philip S. Hempel]

On Sat, 2003-05-17 at 18:09, rick kershner wrote:
> OK so I have many years of experience doing help and less implemnnting Interchange; why do people prefer my help more?
> 
> I help them.
> 
> I have seen too many people flippantly answer questions with non-answer answers. Did ALL you people work for Microsoft before this?
> 
> What is not help:
> 

What *IS* help

> "look in the archives"

Not to be flippant, but, I find all most all my answers to my questions
in the archives, to many people do not know how to ask questions, when
they do ask, and a large number of the unanswered questions have been
answered at least 2001 times. 

The people who know what they are doing here are not here to teach us
how to use an OS or install an app on your "choose your dist" system.

We have to learn to walk before they can run. Basic knowledge and
abilities of your environment is of the utmost importance. 

I see to many people here asking questions that should be handled
someplace else, i.e. "How do I compile Perl for my "dist". That is or
should be placed in the Perl lists, not IC.

The questions that get asked and answered with flippant responses often
are due to the fact if we took a few minutes to look at the IC Dev
website most of the information is there. Now after reading something
and we do not understand it, we should ask for re-iteration on the list.

The one other main reason for the flippant answers, I believe, is to
often we expect someone to do the work for us, handed on a silver
platter so we can just sit back and get "Free", as in beer, support,
something that would cost money otherwise.

I also believe that a large number of us that ask the questions that get
"RTFM" are from or worked for or around Microsoft, I have to know
nothing and I want lots of money for, put my CD, run install, click
here, and I will have a US $200,000 web site up in 10 minutes. NOT!

Interchange is NOT for those who do not know how to use grep, head,
tail, touch, tar, rm, make, gcc, ssh, ETC, if we are the ones to do be
doing the setup.

Pay someone to teach or do it for us.

I have been using IC for almost 5 years now, I ask an occasional
question get two out of five questions answered. Usually for one of the
answered questions, I have asked before, but I stated the question
differently.

I spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through the list with
questions about "How to compile Perl?" or "How do I find the permissions
of a file?" or "Can I use IC on a host with only ftp access?" to find
the one answer buried in it.

I say to them all who do the above, "Go to 'Barnes and Nobles' and buy a
book on UNIX basics" or the quickest answer RTFM.

I personally am tired of the (paraphrase) "I have no clue about
computers and especially UNIX/LINUX/Perl could you help me?".

One other thing, PEOPLE QUIT TOP POSTING!

My 1/2 cents worth.

Good Night.

-- 
Philip S. Hempel
debian/rules

http://linuxhardcore.com/