Powell, Stuart wrote:
Hello, everyone. Hi Stuart,
I've been on this list a long time, and some of the posts in recent days are concerning me. I am also aware that this message makes me flame bait. Especially when you 'attack' a mere mortal guru like Patrick :)
My asbestos undies are firmly in place; bring it on. You wrote this without the undies and therefore you should take its repercussions, without the undies. :)
[snip]
I have included Patrick's reply below merely as an example. Telling people to RTFM or search on Google is not terribly helpful. For either of these methods to be useful, you have to know what it is you're looking for in the first place. This kind of treatment only serves to deter people from asking questions. Anyone remember a few years ago when Ben would dutifully send out the same answer again and again when the Nvidia questions would crop up ? That may have been above and beyond, but it made this list a happy place to be. I have been a RTFM 'victim' courtesy of Patrick, and in hindsight, I have to say that it was the right solution. It may not have been a quick and dirty answer but what I gained from it was a more in-depth knowledge of how my problem could be fixed. I will agree that sometimes seeing Patricks' RTFM doesn't immediately solve the problem, but sometimes it is necessary.
I'm all for the "Teach a man to fish" philosophy, but sometimes, you just need a quick fix for something so you can move on and get past it. Don't forget, today's 'noob' is tomorrow's guru. Sometimes the person who needs 'just a quick fix' doesn't know how it will affect the rest of his system. Sometimes patience , with a little more reading, solves the problem and betters our understanding so tat next time it happens we are better informed about fixing it.
Patrick, I fully support your methods of 'teaching a man to fish', but may I ask that instead of just RTFM you give a student a little something extra ie RTFM <command> or see the /var/share/docs/<command> docs? -- The Little Helper ======================================================================== Hylton Conacher - Linux user # 229959 at http://counter.li.org Currently using SuSE 9.0 Professional with KDE 3.1 Licenced Windows user ========================================================================