Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 03:15:58 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A (IMHO) Question Asking Good Guide Message-ID: <15358.5070.746345.596922@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <24320492@toto.iv>
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Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> types: > On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 08:59:11PM -0600, Mike Meyer wrote: > > Dominic Marks <dominic_marks@btinternet.com> types: > > > On Wednesday 21 November 2001 6:25 pm, Drew Tomlinson wrote: > > > > The preface in the PDF FAQ at > > > > http://www.smoothwall.org/download/pdf/docs/0.9.9/doc.faq.pdf seems > > > > to be a good guide on how to ask questions in forums such as this > > > > one. It might be a place to direct those that don't seem to have a > > > > clue as to how support groups such as this one work. > > > ESR has a good guide as well, somewhere on his home page > > > (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/). > > The preface to the document is ESR's guide. > Mmm. The part of ESR's guide on how to phrase and submit questions > is pretty good. Much of the way it is written however is highly > quetionable IMHO. The continuing use of the third person plural > to refer to "hackers" and the notion that hackers are somehow > above the norms that apply to others is highly dubious. First: I hope you realize that ESR uses hackers in the original sense, and does not mean the juvenile delinquents the the media refers to with that term. Second, I read it as saying that hackers are different from the norms, not above them. This is true. Hackers in the sense that ESR uses it *are* different from the norms. If they weren't different, they wouldn't be hackers. The same comment applies to a lot of professions. In particular, hackers tend to have poorly - or at least differently - developed social skills. I think it's it would be a flaw in the guide if ESR failed to warn the rest of the populace about that. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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