From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Nov 23 1:19:52 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-203-60.mmcable.com [65.31.203.60]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 36E9E37B59E for ; Fri, 23 Nov 2001 01:16:04 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 20942 invoked by uid 100); 23 Nov 2001 09:15:58 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15358.5070.746345.596922@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 03:15:58 -0600 To: Cliff Sarginson Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A (IMHO) Question Asking Good Guide In-Reply-To: <24320492@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Cliff Sarginson types: > On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 08:59:11PM -0600, Mike Meyer wrote: > > Dominic Marks 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. 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