accessing a text file

[Baba]

Someone seeing too many unthoughtful questions from you might tell you
to look it up yourself, in the hopes of getting you to change your
questioning style, so that your future questions will be more thoughtful
and worth answering.  But according to you that would be unfriendly.

Another thing they could do is say nothing, but quietly configure their
news-reading software to ignore your questions completely.  Then none of
your future questions would have any hope of being answered.  Would that
be less unfriendly, or more unfriendly?

Hi Paul

I would support option 1 but phrased more thoughtfully than Benjamin
did (that way no feelings will be hurt):

"Dear xyz,
Your question can easily be researched online. We suggest you give it
a try and to look it up yourself. This will be beneficial both to you
and to us. We do encourage to ask questions only when they have been
researched first. We care about the quality of posts but we also
understand that as a beginner one can tend to look for an easy or
quick way to find answers. So in the meantime here's something to
get you started: link"

But where do you draw the line? Can we not just let people ask
questions regardless? And let those answer who want to and those who
don't just ignore the question? That seems so much easier to me.

 

[Paul Rubin]

But where do you draw the line? Can we not just let people ask
questions regardless? And let those answer who want to and those who
don't just ignore the question? That seems so much easier to me.

The first few times, it's easy to ignore the questions. After a few
more times, it becomes easier to ignore the person asking the questions,
and not even look at the questions.

The answer to many of your questions also is not "research it online",
but rather, "figure it out with your own creativity". That's what being
a programmer is about--figuring out solutions that don't already exist
elsewhere.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Thanks for your feedback. My question is: Who owns this forum? If we
all do then we are allowed to post questions that are simple and that
could otherwise be answered by doing research.

Of course you're allowed to post such questions.

And people are allowed to ignore you, to answer your question
sarcastically, to attempt to teach you how to answer your own
questions, or to respond in other ways.

It's up to _you_ to make the effort to try to insure that you get a
useful response. To that end here is how that is accomplished:

http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Maybe you don't _like_ the fact that you are expected to show just a
tiny bit of inititiative and care in researching and posting your
question, but that's pretty much the way it it works. I'm sure you'd
prefer that everything was handed to you for free on a silver platter
with a side order of beer and cookies. I'd prefer I was 20 years
younger and 30 pounds lighter. Life's tough that way.

It is just unfriendly to tell someone to go and look it up by
themselves.

1) It isn't if give them a hint on where to look it up.

2) Posting questions like yours is considered unfriendly.

Who is licensed to judge what can and cannot be posted as a question?

Nobody. Post whatever questions you want however you want in whatever
language you want. If you don't care about actually _answering_ your
question, feel free to continue in the same vein in which you started.

If you _do_ care about getting a prompt, accurate answer, then:

http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

A teacher of mine used to say: "There are no stupid questions, there
are only stupid answers."

Ask that teacher for help then.

It is arrogant to tell someone in a Forum to "look it up yourself,
this question is too basic".

Perhaps it is. But remember you're the one asking strangers for a free
service, so it's up to you to "play by the rules" in return for that
free service. One of the rules is that you first try to answer the
question yourself.

Can you not understand that accessing a file can seem daunting at
first?

Maybe so, but reading a tutorial isn't.

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Baba a écrit :

"Dear xyz,
Your question can easily be researched online. We suggest you give it
a try and to look it up yourself. This will be beneficial both to you
and to us. We do encourage to ask questions only when they have been
researched first."

On usenet - as well as on most technical forums / mailing lists / etc -,
this usually condensed in a well-known four letters acronym : "RTFM"

Hopefully c.l.py is an unusually friendly and polite place, so we tend
to say it a bit more elegantly and most of the time we do indeed provide
a link.

This being said and given your attitude - you may not realize it, but by
now you would have been flamed to hell and back on quite a few other
newsgroups -, I'm very tempted to switch to option 2.

 

[Baba]

The first few times, it's easy to ignore the questions.  After a few
more times, it becomes easier to ignore the person asking the questions,
and not even look at the questions.

The answer to many of your questions also is not "research it online",
but rather, "figure it out with your own creativity".  That's what being
a programmer is about--figuring out solutions that don't already exist
elsewhere.

Hi Paul

If i look where i was 4 weeks ago and the progress i made in learning
Python i am quite delighted. This forum has helped me and i appreciate
it. I don't think i will ever tell a beginner to "do me a favour" and
to look things up by himself nor will i use the RTFM line (refering to
Bruno's post), i'd just be nice and helpful as everyone here is.
Didn't realise ego's were that big but so is mine i suppose...

kind regards
Baba

 

[Bar Shirtcliff]

| HEREow can you be learning so much python if you're constantly expressing

typo there. I'm not sure how that happens, sometimes, but it's an
untimely abbrev-expansion, in emacs VM.

I meant to say, "How can you..."

Cheers,
Bar

 

[MRAB]

| HEREow can you be learning so much python if you're constantly expressing

typo there. I'm not sure how that happens, sometimes, but it's an
untimely abbrev-expansion, in emacs VM.

I meant to say, "How can you..."

An unkind soul would say that "it's a poor workman who blames his
tools", but as it's emacs... ;-)

 

[Grant Edwards]

Hell no. I'd prefer to have the total of my life experience and just
have my *body* be twenty years younger

I'd have to think about that for a while. A little bit of innocent
optimism might be nice...

 

[Paul Rubin]

If you don't like the responses you get here, you could try posting your
questions on 4chan. If nothing else, that will give you a whole new
perspective on what an "unfriendly" response really looks like.

+1 QOTW

 

[Baba]

Exactly the same set of people who are licensed to judge what can and
cannot be posted as an answer.

If you don't like the responses you get here, you could try posting your
questions on 4chan. If nothing else, that will give you a whole new
perspective on what an "unfriendly" response really looks like.

I would to apologise to anyone who might have been upset or offended
by my reaction. I am new to forums (as i am new to programming) so i
hope i might be forgiven for not appreciating the true value of the
support one can receive on this forum. I wish to reiterate that i
underatand that experts provide help free of charge and in their spare
time so there's no point for me to like or dislike the style of an
answer.

Baba