* Re: comp.lang.ada Digest, Vol 29, Issue 16
2006-07-06 15:01 ` comp.lang.ada Digest, Vol 29, Issue 16 Carroll, Andrew
@ 2006-07-07 14:40 ` M E Leypold
2006-07-07 23:15 ` On how to ask questions Björn Persson
0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: M E Leypold @ 2006-07-07 14:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
"Carroll, Andrew" <andrew.carroll@okstate.edu> writes:
>
> >Fine: I was nice enough not to blame you for
> >missing the recent discussion
>
> I'm surprised Markus didn't write that line. I don't owe him an apology
> either.
No, you don't. But for a slightly different reason than you might
think.
First, I myself don't take very kindly to being lectured on usenet, so
I probably should refrain from telling other people how usenet works
or how they should behave differently.
Second, I sometimes do it anyway, but this has to be seen as an
experiment. I've quite often found a type of person that seems to
behave as if the rest of usenet is just their service personnel, not
volunteers or peers. They often seem not to realize how much they put
of the very people they are asking for help. I haven't found out yet,
why that is so. So sometimes I try to make them understand by
answering their misguided diatribes / flames. I always thought, there
must be _some_ way to get the message through to them (like: That they
are welcome, but that it might be helpful to sure some amount of
effort to come from themselves [*]). Unfortunately I haven't succeed
so far to crack the code of their communications.
Finally, as I said, I'm sorry, if that is a face saving thing for you,
to have to react like this. I probably shouldn't have mixed good
advice (like "really do read that text, it's good") with "educating"
you (which sou probably resent). Note that saying "I'm sorry" on my
part doesn't cost me much. It's a rather abstract thing more on the
level of realizing that something didn't work and the (tiny) effort to
try was wasted after all.
Regards -- Markus
[*] Short and true story on "Showing some amount of effort":
Long ago I've been studying as an exchange student at Imperial
College for some 6 months. For us 3 exchange students the
laboratory work there was the most important things, since the
labs were much better organised and generally more instructive
than at home.
The supervisors were real college teachers (not PHD students as at
home). One of the super visors was Lady T, well known for her
achievements in her subject and a number of in depth text
books.
One day we heard her "interviewing" with another group of
students. She absolutely trashed them and partly listening in in
that conversation (which happened in the same lab room so there
was was no way to avoid it altogether), we got the impression
that the problem was not that they didn't know certain things or
that they had asked stupid questions: The problem was that they
just hadn't tried to find out for themselves and thus were not
even able to ask the questions the right way.
So when our group began to work at the experiment supervised by
Lady T, and questions started to crop up, we first skimmed the
relevant text book of Lady T on that subject, convinced ourselves
that the solution wasn't there in plain sight and then set out to
formulate our questions in the terminology of the text book and
referring to the information in the book as baseline.
We didn't get trashed and we learned a lot from Lady T in the next
months.
I often have the impression that the usenet works a bit like Lady
T, so the lesson we learned there (first show some effort
yourself, establish some baseline in knowledge and terminology)
was really useful.
Unfortunately I do not seem to be able to convey that lesson
either to a certain class of usenet posters (when I try) nor to a
larger part of my own students (when I was teaching at
university). There is always a certain percentage that cannot be
bothered to use a library or to at least use Google but insists on
getting help or answers anyway (taking away the time of helpers
that could have been spent better).
It's a pity :-).
THE END.
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