On Sat, 9 Mar 2002 14:46:41 -0800 "Howard Hansen" <zope@halfmagic.com> wrote:
number of questions, but answer them as fully as you can, assuming that the user knows essentially nothing. Pepper those answers with links, explanations, and philosophical asides. Make it a mini-howto and a seminar on advanced topics in Zope. And be sure to spend exactly the same amount of time, don't add to your burden.
This seems like pretty sage advice. Tim Peters does essentially this on the various Python newsgroups and maillists. His answers are almost always correct and utterly comprehensive. It can be exceedingly difficult to be not only correct but clear and comprehensive when replying to maillist questions. I have lots of respect for Tim and other supermen like him who successfully dispense wisdom with clarity and style. I think Howard's suggestion is a good one and I will for one recommit to doing things this way even if it means I need to answer fewer questions. That said, everybody has their own style of helping out; a prod in the right direction from Dieter is miles better than no answer. I appreciate Dieter's Zope contributions very much.. he is sometimes terse, but he helps many people who would otherwise be left without reply. And this makes him a sort of maillist hero. ;-) - C