[Zope] comment on posting behavior

[J C Lawrence]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2000 22:43:41 -0500 
Tom Neff <tneff@bigfoot.com> wrote:

> I do want to re-emphasize that what I was really complaining about
> was the kind of thing where someone asks "How do I get rid of the
> HTML and HEAD tags when my DTML method is viewed," and someone
> else answers "You can't, that's in the browser" -- i.e., complete
> BS.  If you don't know _how_ to verify a statement like that
> before posting it, or you don't have _time_ to verify it, then you
> should not post it at all.  Let someone else handle it.

Before we get too hot under the collar about all this, let's step
back a second and relax.  There's no deliberate sowing of confusion
going on here.  People aren't deliberately posting bogus data as
truth, or misrepresenting themselves as the fount of all Zope
wisdom.

So sometimes people post things that aren't correct, or are even
blatantly false.  Big Deal.  The main thing they've revealed is that
they don't understand something (like there aren't plenty of things
we don't fully understand ourselves).

People try and help other people.  This is a Good Thing, is
something to be lauded, and something to be encouraged.  A problem
however is that much of the time our knowledge is incompleat and the
answers we give, are, well, incompleat.  Worse, sometimes we jsut
don't know enough, or in enough detail to realise that our answers
are incompleat or even flat out wrong.  So, being well intentioned
and even earnest, we get corrected, and learn, and hopefully next
time give better and more compleat answers.

This isn't even something unique to Zope.  I've seen the exact same
process and mechanics going in in every technical forum I've been
in, even if the subject is well defined, well documented, well
explored and more than 100 years old.  People are generally well
intentioned, try to do the "right thing" and to help where they can.
Sometimes their help is misguided.  Whoopee.  Give them a chance to
re-educate and do better next time.  If they don't, ___then___ call
in the attack dogs.  

-- 
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw@kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder@kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--