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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.

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