RE: Newbies welcome, or not?

  • From: Kevin Lange <klange@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "'oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:41:40 -0500

One thing I liked about this list in the past is that folks never used to
turn any questions away.  It did not mater whether or not the person was a
Newbie or an Expert.  Their question was answered in a courtious and
respectful manner.

I kind of wonder where that list went to.

There are names on this list of people who's books and advice I use every
day.  You have my respect for your abilities in this field.  

Unfortunately, some of you are fast losing that respect because of the way
you treat people who you consider 'lesser' in knowledge than yourself.

Why don't we try to teach people to do things right instead of ripping them
apart because of mistakes that we see as 'obvious'.  

All the experts here were newbies at one time.   Maybe its a good thing that
not everyone laughed in your face at the idiotic things you did before you
learned beter.







-----Original Message-----
From: Jared.Still@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:Jared.Still@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 1:21 PM
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Newbies welcome, or not?


> 
> ANYBODY who would type ANYTHING in as root WITHOUT knowing what it 
> does EXACTALLY should not have root access, is not responsable 
> enough to have root access and needs to WAKE UP and LEARN the "man" 
command.
> 
> good lord, people, what happened to personal responsibility and 
> professionalism?
> 
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. 

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 
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? 

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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