On Sunday 10 October 2004 10:02 am, Anders Johansson wrote:
On Friday, 8 October 2004 22.32, Terence McCarthy wrote:
On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 18:55:29 +0200
Anders Johansson
wrote: One of my teachers once asked us what we thought the most important thing we had learned (or would learn) at university was. The answer (very correct) wasn't some obscure piece of information, or even some very useful piece of information, it was *how to search* for information.
If you don't know how to look for information, google can be your worst nightmare
If you can't tell a good answer from a bad one (and there are some very bad ones out there), google can be your worst enemy
Careful here, Anders, you may upset the new PC on this list....
The points you are making are solid, but should not be restricted- there are info, man and countless other sources of information available to those who are able (read "willing") to check them out before loading the list with their "instant gratification" questions. Those who don't want to aren't and will.
You seem to have missed my point. If you don't have a certain amount of base knowledge, you will have a very hard time reading and understanding the often terse and poorly written man/info pages, and googling around when you can't tell the difference between a correct answer and an incompetent, dangerous answer is very difficult as well
Being a newbie is hard
And very time consuming. I like linux in spite of the fact that it doesn't always 'just work'. When you have to spend hours or days trying to find answers to problems instead of just getting the job done your working on it can be very frustrating. I don't think people don't search for answers because their lazy , I think they just want to get whatever they're doing done in a reasonable amount of time. Collectively this list knows a lot, it's a 'living' database and in many ways it's better than google because searching for answers on the list doesn't leave you drowning in a sea of information looking for the 'answer'. Personally I have a lot of respect for this list. It replaced my local lug as my source of information long ago and I have learned a LOT on this list, including how to use google effectively:-). Maybe a FAQ list would be good for the list, to hold all the answers people get tired of giving over and over again. We could all contribute the questions and answers from the list that have really helped us to use linux more effectively. It may be tedious for you who know the answers but for us who don't you provide an invaluable and timely service. Thank you, Jerome