Demanding Gets You Nowhere
Posted: Mon, 3 April 2006 | permalink | No comments
Wow, some people need to learn how to ask questions. Just saw a posting to a mailing list that said (paraphrasing):
I need detailed instructions on how to do easy task foo, and then fairly involved task bar. I want the whole command process including how to do trivial thing X, unnecessary thing Y, as I tried and could not get it work properly at all. And also irrelevant question Z.
Now, I don't know about you, but a flat-out demand like that doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies and make me want to help -- in fact, it makes me feel like a CentOS developer.
Practically speaking, I know (roughly) the answer to this person's question, but it'd take me a couple of minutes to check I had the right answer, and to write it all up. Unfortunately my motivation levels for unpaid, gratuitous assistance just dropped to zero (coincidentally, as I was reading his message).
Time to give the Internet a healthy dose of the "How to ask questions the smart way" salts, methinks.
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