Making the most of this mailing list.

[Gilles Gravier]

Hi!

On 06/01/2010 15:02, Elizabeth Krumbach wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 6:58 AM, Amedee Van Gasse (ub)
> <amedee-ubuntu at amedee.be> wrote:
>   
>> "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"
>> by Eric Steven Raymond (ESR) and Rick Moen
>> http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>>     
> This link was brought up during the community roundtable at UDS back
> in November. It does have it's merit, but I'm actually not a huge fan.
> It tends to be pretty strict and the framing of saying how to ask
> *smart* questions makes the assumption that people who aren't asking
> them that way are asking *dumb* questions. This isn't really the case
> and we don't want people to be afraid to ask questions for fear they
> are "dumb" the goal here is to teach folks how to ask "Better"
> questions :)
>
> There is a useful community-maintained document that boils down and
> gives examples to several what P Echols' original mail discusses:
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GettingAnswers
>   

I work on the assumption that there are no "dumb questions"... but only
"dumb answers". So if somebody asks a question which seems to not
totally make sense... first think that they may simply not know HOW to
ask it, and that it might first help probing them for more context and
details before providing a stock, possible dumb, answer. :)

Gilles