Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 01:36:14 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Marty Poulin <mpoulin@honk.org> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: /dev entries for NIC's Message-ID: <19990919013608.E14607@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.990917163352.9308A-100000@spectre>; from Marty Poulin on Fri, Sep 17, 1999 at 04:37:25PM -0400 References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909171343550.35608-100000@dt014nb6.san.rr.com> <Pine.LNX.3.96.990917163352.9308A-100000@spectre>
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On Fri, Sep 17, 1999 at 04:37:25PM -0400, Marty Poulin wrote:
>
>
> If I can add $0.02 - this is precisely why the charter for this list
> doesn't want people to ask questions here. Ask a bunch of newbies a
> question, and you'll get a bunch of different answers, all of them
> potentially wrong.
>
> I can understand wanting to help, but the best way to help someone in a
> situation like this is to point them to -questions where they can expect a
> more experienced level of support.
Thanks Marty, you're quite right. Don't believe for one minute that the
experts never make mistakes. FreeBSD-Questions shows the most clever
people making stupid mistakes now and then, sometimes dangerous typos
or misunderstandings after working too long, but they're _very_ quick
to correct each other. They have a huge pool of knowledgeable peers to
quietly assess each response and pipe up if there's any doubt.
Sometimes experts come in here, meaning well, and try to advise newbies
away from peer review, and when they make mistakes it's not easy to
notice or have the misinformation corrected in a timely manner. In
fact, because of the power disparity the whole thing is rather
difficult to deal with in a civil manner. Some have repeated this on
three or more incidents, and there seems to be no stopping the
misinformation other than by enforcing the list charter on all. That's
why we should not ask, nor answer, _nor_believe_ answers seen here, and
should assume that everyone is yesterday's newbie no matter who they
are or how authoritative they sound. It's fine training for the other
lists too :-)
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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