RE: Newbies welcome, or not?

Jared,

On the "newbies welcome, or not?" question, I'm here to see what people =
with
all levels of experience have to (a) say and (b) ask about Oracle. I'm =
not
here to judge the quality of the questions; a big reason I'm here is to =
see
what people /think/ is relevant.


Cary Millsap
Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd.
http://www.hotsos.com
* Nullius in verba *

Upcoming events:
- Performance Diagnosis 101: 6/22 Pittsburgh, 7/20 Cleveland, 8/10 =
Boston
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- Visit www.hotsos.com for schedule details...


-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx =
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Srinivasan Vasan
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 4:19 AM
To: 'oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Cc: Srinivasan Vasan
Subject: RE: Newbies welcome, or not?

Jared,

        Well said and Agreed. At the end of the day, it is all relative. If
some of us feel that newbies are asking silly questions, then are
acknowledged experts like Jonathan Lewis or Steve Adams justified in =
feeling
that OUR questions don't make the cut, either?

It is better to point people at documentation or refuse to answer =
instead of
deliberately misleading them. Even if people have the sense to not use =
the
misleading material, it will just annoy them to read a response that is =
not
helpful, especially when they are trying to resolve an issue.

Cheers,=20

Vasan.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jared.Still@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:Jared.Still@xxxxxxxxxxx]=20
Sent: 28 June 2004 19:21
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Newbies welcome, or not?

>=20
> ANYBODY who would type ANYTHING in as root WITHOUT knowing what it=20
> does EXACTALLY should not have root access, is not responsable=20
> enough to have root access and needs to WAKE UP and LEARN the "man"=20
command.
>=20
> good lord, people, what happened to personal responsibility and=20
> professionalism?
>=20
It would seem that many of us have forgotten that Scott Adams gets
fodder for Dilbert from real life.

As Mark Powell has pointed out, folks get thrown into the position of
DBA and/or Unix admin without much prior experience, and they don't
have much say in the matter, short of finding new employment.  That
is not always an option.  They may not yet have a good concept of how
unix works, and don't yet appreciate the power of root.=20

So, are we saying we should not answer newbie questions for folks that
don't have a clue, and yet they are required to fill the position?

Even pointing someone to the correct section of the documentation can
be extremely useful.  I started with Oracle 7.0.12.  The documentation
was quite a bit smaller than now, but it wasn't always clear which=20
doc I needed.

The docs are now 20k+ pages for all the Oracle online docs.  The index
and search capabilities are useful, but hardly infallible.  Is it too
much trouble for us to point someone in the right direction?

How about the less experienced listers? I often ignore simple questions,
knowing that this gives an opportunity for junior folks to participate
in the list, and help out those that have even less experience than
they do.

So, what's the consensus?=20

Should be welcome folks with little experience, or make it clear that
they should come back when they know what they're doing?

My vote is for trying to be helpful, even to those with annoyingly
simple questions.  If I don't care to answer, I leave it for someone =
else.


Jared


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