Wendell Cochran wrote:
I receive way more e-mail than I have time for. So far my filters are only mental, but configuration of grey cells definitely flags `newbie', `please help', & any vacuity like `Strange Problem with Debian' -- & I skip on to prospects more promising. Oh, you say I'm missing some interesting posts? Sure, but seldom. Now & then I do read what's under an inept subject line, & almost always find my reasoning reinforced. Back to Baloo (above), rough but right.
Generally yeah, there are a lot of messages to go through. From Debian-Users alone there can be hundreds within a day.
Of course, if a person is a newbie and needs help, they probably aren't used to the protocol for asking for help.
If you went to a friend who "knows a lot about computers" you generally would say, "Hey, I need some help with my computer" which invites the response, "What's the problem you're having?" in some form or another.
Some people assume that they can start the same kind of conversation in a mailing list. So that accounts for the people who post horrible subject lines but have interesting posts.
At the same time, you have the people who just have no clue. But are they ignorant or stupid? Stupid people can't be helped. Ignorance can be destroyed by teaching.
I have no problem with people who have no time to waste with either type. Sometimes with hundreds of messages, you have no time to help not only teach them how to fix their problem but to also fix their misconceptions about what the problem is about.
I do have a problem with people who have the time to flame these people though. It is just rude, especially in an environment where community is the primary means of gaining knowledge.
Unfortunately, people need to be told to RTFM everyday, because everyday new people come and don't realize that they can RTFM. Pointing people to Google or to the source is a nice bit of convenience. How many people grew up isolated from other computer geeks and don't have the contacts to know about things we take for granted, like Google or LUGs? It is hard to believe that people grow up without knowing about these things, but it is obviously true.
If someone knows about these sources of information but refuses to use them, that is just plain wrong. They should be flamed on sight.