RE: [cobalt-users] Cobalt user chatroom????

["Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gotta back up Dan here...

At 4/6/01 06:48 PM -0500, you wrote:
> This is the problem with simply telling everyone to "look at the archives."

"Simply" in your sentence implies "only." However, Dan *consistently* goes 
one better; he reminds the person to look in the archives and provides a 
specific link to the answer *in the archives*. Thereby demonstrating that 
yes, it's in there, and providing an answer as well.

> And not to beat Dan up, but this is one of his favorite messages it seems.

If he can find it in the archives and post it as an answer, then so can the 
other guy. And the other guy would get faster answers, and more time on the 
list would be spent answering his more difficult questions: a win-win if I 
ever saw one.

> I took this person's question to be is there a chat room SET UP to allow 
> us to chat together in real time. Please Dan, explain how that would be in 
> the archives. And please, no flames!

Read the link he posted... which you did not do before *you* posted.

> There has been a tremendous amount of nastiness in the Cobalt lists 
> lately. I think that its enough, IMHO.

Doug, this post of yours contributes nothing to the content of the list. It 
does not ask or answer the question or provide anything new; hence you are 
adding to the noise rather than the signal. And the nastiness has been 
close to zero this week... may I suggest you lead by example?

> Sometimes its much easier to ask a simple question, and get a simple reply 
> back. Although the answer MIGHT be in the archive, it hardly takes too 
> much time or bandwidth to simply answer.

I'll take "faster" and "better" over "easier" any day. However, let me see 
if I understood you correctly by rephrasing your comment. I believe you 
said: "Sometimes it's not worth the effort to go search the archives; it's 
easier to just post the question and have someone post an answer."

I find the position described above (which may or may not be yours but sure 
sounds like it) to be discourteous and inconsiderate in the extreme. See, 
there are two types of archived knowledge: one kept in the mailing list 
archives, and the other in people's heads and experiences.

If one uses the computer-based archives to research simple questions which 
are probabilistically almost certain to have been answered before, one 
leaves the people time to answer more difficult questions, which then make 
their way into the computer archives and help them grow and get better. It 
also allows all other people to spend more time learning and growing the 
archives in their head, again so that we as a collective can learn faster 
and grow better.

If, on the other hand, one chooses the lazy man's route and asks the simple 
questions on the list, where people take the time to answer them over, and 
over, and over, three very bad things happen:

1.- The mailing list archives fill up with repeats of the same thing, and 
no new knowledge is added. Eventually the "knowledge base" is severely damaged.

2.- People are not machines; they eventually get bored of answering the 
same damn thing ("what's port 111?") and simply quit answering. Thus the 
community is damaged.

3.- People learn less (those answering questions, those lurking on list, 
even the dude asking the question), and thus we all are injured.

Lazyness is no excuse. Search the damned archives.

> Can we try to not react too quickly, and remember we are all supposed to 
> be nice and colleagues?

We can; we will. But let me add that we are all also supposed to be members 
of a community to help each other, and sometimes that help is best given by 
teaching fishing rather than handing out fish. Hence Dan's position.

--
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx