[dokuwiki] Re: complaining about no resends

  • From: Anika Henke <a.c.henke@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: dokuwiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 00:17:32 +0200

Jo Rhett wrote:

On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 09:13:05AM +0200, Andreas Gohr wrote:

Everyone please stop resending your mails to list. If you didn't get an answer the first time this means usually a) nobody knows an answer, b) the answer would be obvious with just a little search or c) you did not read
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Andreas, it is especially important to know if the problem is a, b or c.


If a, then we need to write code to fix it ourselves.

Uhm ... Who should reply, if they don't know any answers? Do you really want to have a few hundred mails in your inbox reading "Dunno."?!
No, the best (and only!) way to answer if you don't know any answer, is not to answer at all.



If b, then we need to figure out the right way to search for this problem. I did extensive searches for each of my issues before posting, but later some ways of discussing them that used words I hadn't thought of.


This depends. If it was something really extremely obvious and the questioner asks in a not-too-polite way (which must be the kind of people Andi meant) ... You would not really want to do this time-consuming, bothering work in your spare time when there is more important work to do, do you?


On the other hand, some people tend to answer "RTFM" a bit too soon ...

If c, then we need to understand what about the question makes it dumb.
Sometimes that will simply have to do with lack of familiarity with the
code base.


Yes, that's why Andi sends this link (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) every once in a while ... to help to understand what about the question makes it dumb.
It'a only just common sense ...


But "lack of familiarity with the code base" does not sound like the kind of people Andi meant here, anyway.


In short, I don't see that a person has any choice but to resend.
Unless someone clues them in about a, b, or c, they won't know where to
start reading/coding to solve the problem.


Uhm ... IMHO, resending is impolite and won't bring any advantages whatsoever. Period.
AND it causes the exact opposite of what the inquirer wanted: Resending will only annoy people more and they will be inclined to ignore the message just the more.
Maybe it's something different after some few weeks, maybe during summer (when presumably half the list has been on holiday). *But not after less than three days!* People work, people do not answer mails every day, people have lives ... I would not expect even a "good" question to be necessarily answered within two weeks!
And *if* you resend any mail there should be more information in it concerning the problem. (And only if it's done to hide intelligently that the only meaning is really to draw the attention to it.)


*sigh*
Sorry for all the railing,

Anika
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