I believe the list should welcome new people even if some of them ask "dumb" questions. The reader is free just delete the post and follow the threads on topics of interest to them. There is a fair amount of volume on this mailing list, but, as I see it, the problem is not the number of "dumb" questions posted, rather it is the number of dumb responses. I see some attempts at humor within a response as fine but posting a response where an answer has been given for no other purpose except to try to be humorous is just a waste of bandwidth. Worse, posts full of sarcasm are bound to be confusing for people with English as a second language. One of the rules of effective communication is to tailor your message for the audience. The existing audience includes people green behind the ears, people who struggle with English (including all Americans according to the British [ 8-D ]), and some real experts. IMHO -- Mark D Powell -- -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jared.Still@xxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 2:21 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at http://www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at http://www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at http://www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at http://www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------