On answering styles (was Re: no "defrag" in Linux?)

[Scott Kitterman]

On Saturday 22 July 2006 13:51, Peter Garrett wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 12:38:36 -0400
>
> "Robert E. Butts" <himco2 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, 2006-07-22 at 13:14 +0200, Alexander Skwar wrote:
> > > Those are givens. It's not necessary to mention this.
> >
> > I'm with the OP on this .. I've been using Linux for ten years, read a
> > dozen or more books, and I'm still just a newbie when it comes to
> > learning this operating system.
> >
> > I teach / train for a living.  In my work, there is no such thing as a
> > "given"
>
> I tend to agree that just answering " tune2fs " is a bit terse for many
> reading this list :)
>
> I've observed, since I started using Linux about 4 years ago, that there
> are at least two attitudes prevalent in the "help" community ( a gross
> oversimplification, but for the purposes of clarity... )
>
> 1) Give people the command ( implies RTFM, and / or know about --help -h
> etc )
> 2) Try to explain a bit and point to documentation/ help/ URLs
>
> The (1) attitude has its points. Although it is intimidating and obscure
> for the beginner, it encourages people to learn for themselves and
> ultimately, perhaps, pass on the commands and method to others. On the
> other hand, if the people being "helped" are not motivated to learn *nix
> as such, and just want  things explained, it can cause them simply to get
> angry, or make them feel stupid.
>
> The (2) attitude is mostly the converse of these points. While it is both
> more friendly and more immediately helpful, it also sometimes results in
> people just doing things "parrot fashion" without understanding what they
> are actually doing. Often pointing people to a wiki, documentation and
> howtos produces howls of anguish - but it's arguable that people who won't
> read are not suited to Free and Open Source Software. A lot of people will
> happily copy paste commands from a website without having the faintest
> idea what the commands do. This is not to be encouraged, for obvious
> reasons.
>
> Clearly a hypothetical (3) would be a combination and extension of both (1)
> and (2) - but most people have neither the time nor the skills to do this,
> and a lot of mailing list posts would become more like articles ...
>
> On balance, I feel a list like the Ubuntu list should lean more towards
> (2)  ;-) On a Debian list the tradition is such that (1) is more often
> assumed - but then Debian never claims to be a beginners' distro, whereas
> Ubuntu, though used by people at both ends of the knowledge spectrum, is
> intended to be easy for ordinary mortals, who might not have aspirations to
> geekhood ;-)
>
> Just some thoughts, for what they're worth.
>
Well, conversely, when I ask a question, I'm happy with whatever information I 
get as a pointer towards solving my problem.

People who don't like style 1 answers are free to ignore them.

#2 style answers take longer to give and so quite often your choice is a #1 
answer or none at all.

Frankly, I think that bad questions are a bigger issue.  I am a lot more 
likely (where I have the knowledge) to try and answer questions where I get 
the impression the poster has at least made an effort to figure it out for 
themselves.

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

I re-read this one periodically to remind myself when asking questions.

Scott K