How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

[Samwise]

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#answers

Between dumb user questions at work and dumb newbie antics here, I recognize almost every pattern of poor behavior described.  Brilliant.

[Ironwood]

Muny For Munt ?

[Oban]

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#answers

Between dumb user questions at work and dumb newbie antics here, I recognize almost every pattern of poor behavior described.  Brilliant.

Thank you very much for finding that link, you just saved me at least two hours worth of typing.

[Yegolev]

Yeah, that's how I would answer questions if not for these silly notions of not offending clients.  Well, I'm also too nice to do that to most people.

[tazelbain]

Do you want meet old friends?

[Samwise]

Yeah, that's how I would answer questions if not for these silly notions of not offending clients.

Sh.  Let me dream.

"How can I use X to do Y?" is my least-favorite question of all time.  Closely followed by "my X doesn't work."

[Jayce]

Yeah, that's how I would answer questions if not for these silly notions of not offending clients.

Sh.  Let me dream.

"How can I use X to do Y?" is my least-favorite question of all time.  Closely followed by "my X doesn't work."

I think those instructions describe what goes on at this site in an abstract sort of way.  The short version of what they have to say is "we are mean to you if you act retarded, because it keeps the community from becoming a nest of assbaskets."

[Samwise]

Part of it is, yeah.  (Most of it is actually pretty constructive advice IMO.)  This part in particular reminded me of whoever had the latest "OMG U GUYZ R MEAN" meltdown and stormed off:

Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by people actively applying them, visibly, in public.

[Yegolev]

F13 is much less harsh than certain hacker/tech groups.

[Samwise]

'S true.  I'm actually not sure how we get such a rep for being big meanyheads.  I suspect it's because unlike many sites we're equal-opportunity meanyheads, and we're occasionally mean to people that have become accustomed to nicer treatment.   

[Yegolev]

This just happened in my corp IM (paraphrased):

contractor: hi could you set sudo for path /XXXX/XXXX/XXXX/
contractor: in system XXX
contractor: Please
* I cat /etc/sudoers and see that exact path, the one I set two or three days ago
me: what error do you get

So far no reply after ten minutes.  I feel like Rick Moranis in Spaceballs.

[Samwise]

That happens to me a couple times a week at least.

Customer: "How can I make X work?"
Me: "What error message do you get when you try X?"
Customer: "..."
Me: "How's it going?  Is X working now?"
Customer: "..."

Yeah.

[Yegolev]

More gold from the same guy, who I find is going to be holding the bag now that someone else is resigning.  Yay.

Asking me to kill  a process:
me: (10:14 AM) - that is the one i cannot kill
him: (10:26 AM) - why?
him: (10:27 AM) - you czan try now
him: (10:27 AM) - i have come out of that directory

My head hurt after reading that a few times.

[Azazel]

'S true.  I'm actually not sure how we get such a rep for being big meanyheads.  I suspect it's because unlike many sites we're equal-opportunity meanyheads, and we're occasionally mean to people that have become accustomed to nicer treatment.   

I would say that's exactly it. Aside from, say FoH, this place seems to be one that has a lot of devs and industry people posting, and pretty much being treated like other users without a massive amount of "you are famous, like unto a god to us mere mortals" being held over the users by the mods. The result of this is people take Raph to task pretty regularly, yet he comes back and talks candidly. While the inverse is that WUA says unflattering things about RA Salvatore, and Curt Schilling gets defensive and decides that he's not being spoken to with the right amount of deference that befits his status as some famous baseball guy and leaves with a "hey I dont have time for forums now, but come visit my blog".

[Trippy]

Now that Raph has his own company to run I don't expect to see him around here as much either.

[Yegolev]

I rather think it's a credit that Curt posted here at all, really, since he seems to get criticism from various sources.  He doesn't seem to shy away from it, it's just that he has trouble with text; I have RL friends who are incredibly well-spoken but look like retards in text.  So, no matter what I might think of Curt, he gets plenty of points for posting here in a "real" atmosphere and subjecting himself to the opinions of people who began playing MMORPGS before that terrible acronym was coined.