From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,efc4c7de5b60f8a4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: comp.lang.ada Digest, Vol 29, Issue 16 References: From: M E Leypold Date: 07 Jul 2006 16:40:50 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Some cool user agent (SCUG) NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.72.226.169 X-Trace: news.arcor-ip.de 1152282842 88.72.226.169 (7 Jul 2006 16:34:02 +0200) X-Complaints-To: abuse@arcor-ip.de Path: g2news2.google.com!news2.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeed.arcor-ip.de!news.arcor-ip.de!not-for-mail Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:5554 Date: 2006-07-07T16:40:50+02:00 List-Id: "Carroll, Andrew" 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.