[Ilugc] advice to newbies

From: lawgon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kenneth Gonsalves)
Date: Thu Feb 4 11:19:55 2010

here is a cut and paste of an interesting piece of advice on the django-users
mailing list. It could be of relevance to us too:

http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

You've posted this link a few times now, Shawn, but I'd rather you
didn't make a habit of doing so.

While ESR's point is valid, and many people would benefit from
following the spirit of his advice, ESR's tone in that document (and
many other documents) isn't helpful.

I don't care how wonderful "hackers" are -- they don't get special
permission to treat other people like crap. Using phrases like "you
are one of the idiots we are talking about" and "lazy sponge" isn't
productive in any situation, and especially when you're trying to
foster a community spirit. Writing about how hackers are just trying
to "protect their communications channels from being drowned in
irrelevance" completely ignores the fact the person asking the
question probably doesn't think their question is irrelevant.

If you must post a link to a 'howto' guide, might I suggest that [1]
is a much better document. It addresses bug reports rather than
questions specifically, but at the very least, the tone is a lot
better.

[1] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

Yours
Russ Magee %-)
--
regards
kg
http://lawgon.livejournal.com

[Ilugc] advice to newbies

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