Hi Michael, Tiller, Michael (M.M.) wrote:
This is such a bunch of bullshit. I am so tired of "the answer is out there somewhere, why can't you find it yourself?" being the justification for not helping people who ask reasonable questions. To add insult to injury Asad was being quite courteous (e.g. he went so far as to thank you for your initial response) and you guys just start jumping all over him. I think that you have to look for an answer, then if you don't find anything, you should explain this on your post.
Please explain to me why the mailing list should be a solution-of-last-result??? After all, you can find the solution to every question by looking at the Zope source code...ergo, all questions to the mailing list are a waste of time because the person didn't have the time to go picking through the source code?
Personally, I am more than happy to help people with questions if I know the answer off the top of my head. Yes, I feel the same when I can help somebody else, but I don't agree with your conception of a mailing list. Concerning to the source code, I agree that it is difficult for newies to find there what they are looking for. However, there are lots of questions that aren't related to the source code itself and that are already answered in the documentation. At least, people should take time to read it.
***What is the big deal?!?***
Just because the answer exists somewhere doesn't mean I expect people to spend lots of their time (**which is valuable too by the way**) to go digging it out. Zope (and Plone) are very complicated systems and not all of us hack the source code to Zope on a daily basis so we don't know all the "ins and outs". If you consider it a waste of your time to answer our questions then DON'T, but there is no need to insult us. No offense intended, but the thing is that if every one posts every question he/she has without searching first, then it will be difficult for the people looking at the archives to find an answer and, on the other hand, the server hosting the list will need more space to store it. With this I'm not saying that Asad didn't search the archives. Perhaps he did and couldn't find what he was looking for. Or perhaps he used the wrong keywords, it has also happened to me ;-)
I don't know if you noticed but they don't exactly have the mindshare or marketshare of other solutions and I don't think that is likely to change when people come here looking for answers and get nothing but grief. I've said it many times before...if you can't be constructive just don't say anything. You are poisoning this community with this nonsense.
In my opinion, the level or arrogance and stubbornness to help on the part of some people on this mailing list is really disgraceful and I can't believe others on this list don't feel the same way. I think that when one posts by the first time on a mailing list, generally makes mistakes (ie: post a FAQ, I did it too), then the people tell you that you have to search first, and you think that they are rude and don't want to help you. But with the time you see that they just want to have a clean resource that everybody can consult efficiently. Obiously, there are always arrogant people, but you can't do anything against that. But generally, and on this case too, I think that the people here aren't arrogant and they are tolerant. You should visit other mailing lists and see the flame wars and the offensive language used there.
Regards, Josef