Re: [lowliest priority help] needed for Apache in Debian stable
on Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 09:28:33PM -0700, Paul Johnson (baloo@ursine.dyndns.org) wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 03:04:08AM +0000, C Masters wrote:
> > I have received cc'd mails reminding me that Debian is a volunteer
> > supported community. I accept this fully, and realize that I will not
> > get immediate responses. However, I am sure that I am not alone in
> > experiencing severe frustration when a previously well-working
> > application, listed as a "stable" package, no longer behaves as it had.
>
> It sometimes happens in stable. Not often, but if you find an obscure
> enough use that hasn't been as well tested as other functionality that
> everybody uses, things can get weird.
>
> > I find it a tad "superior" to hear the constant responses of "wait,
> > we're all volunteers" and "if you don't like it, build it yourself" that
> > has been lurking here of late.
>
> Why? This attitude isn't anywhere near exclusive to debian-user, nor
> is it widely accepted as a sign of a collective superiority complex.
> There have been instances where people have been both clueless and
> pretentious enough to deliberately EMP (excessivly multi-post) the
> list and assign themselves a priority (that's the reader's job, not
> the sender's, whether we're talking snail mail or email) then come off
> far less intelligently than you have when people have tried to provide
> basic clue.
I'll give a more direct reason for this.
I'm tremendously overextended on my personal bandwidth budget. I'll
sweep through mailing lists a few times a week and look for posts which
appear to be worth replies. Clueful, non-FAQ, intelligent questions
providing sufficient detail to form a useful response, receive
second-highest priority.
Highest goes to the topics for which I've written canned FAQs. Backups,
partitioning, XDM management & disabling, chroot installs, books. I can
include the relevant text or URL with a few commands.
Threads which have received replies generally get nixed (I suspect the
question's been answered, or mooted). If the topic looks interesting I
may wade through to teach myself something new when time permits.
Conversely, a mildly (few days) stale, unanswered post usually gets some
interest.
Threads on topics I'm not particularly versed in get nixed.
Posts with no subject are deleted.
Posts which are difficult to read (poor grammer, poor construction, poor
formatting, HTML formatting, attachments, crossposted, or otherwise
antisocial) get deleted. I configure mutt to highlight posts on several
of these conditions by default.
The point of all this: it helps *you* to learn what the rules of
engagement and good citizenship are. Multiple posts and screaming (or
missing) subjects are considered by many to be antisocial (repeating a
post after a day or so is OK, repeating it after several minutes is
not). Posting questions answered by five minutes' Googling or answered
by reading a man page are appropriately answered by indicating such,
possibly pointing out the manpage. Posts answerable by a single word
(E.g.: "can I configure a firewall on Debian?", "can I optimize my
processing?") are appiately answered in the affirmative or negative.
Reading the following is *STRONGLY* encouraged:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
...Oh, Paul already mentioned it ;-)
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
> Consider this the Fodor's Travel Guide to any technically oriented
> mailing list or newsgroup.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Every love's the love before
In a duller dress.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Summary"
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