Quality vs. Quantity (Was: Re: RTFM? IWMITWAFM! (Was: Re: [Zope] WebDAV, Zope, M$ and implications...))

[Howard Hansen]

Dieter, I appreciate all of the work you and the other Zope deities do
helping people.  Clearly this entails a great deal of time and effort on
your part and you probably don't get nearly the recognition you deserve.

>From a short-term perspective, it probably makes more sense for you to spend
your list-reading hour per day responding to the largest number of requests
possible.  I don't think that's true from a long-term perspective.  In my
experience, progressing from Zope newbie to someone who knows just enough
about Zope to be dangerous, I've searched many many times for solutions to
problems, only to find little squibs of answers saying things like "RTFM
about Virtual Host Monsters" or "Download ZPatterns and use that".

I would suggest that you try answering half of the total 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.

I think the result of this would be that the next time someone has the same
question, they'll do a search and be much more likely to find your answer in
the archives.  If they can't and it ends up on the list, I might just
remember your contribution, find it, and point the newbie there myself,
while you spend your hour writing up another mini-howto for the ages.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I think it's worth a try!

Howard Hansen
http://howard.editthispage.com


----- Original Message -----
Message: 21
From:
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 12:31:03 +0100
To:
Cc: Zope List <zope@zope.org>
Subject:
Douglas Carnall writes:
 > ....
 > When I see posts from core Zope people
 > saying (basically) RTFM rather than precisely referencing an issue it
 > depresses me, because in fact every time they do that they are weakening
the
 > platform I hope to learn, and increasing the drag on the efforts of
others
 > to get started.
 >
 > Maybe if, as a friendly courtesy, everyone who responds on an
 > already-discussed issue included one relevant URL in their reply Zope
would
 > start to be a better documented place.
You ask for a lot, too much for me personally, at least:

  I read several hundred posts per day and respond to about a dozen.
  I have only a few minutes per post. While, of course, it would
  take only some additional few minutes to look up a (single) precise URL
  or reference, I get angry when someones asks "URL please!".

  It is his problem not mine. He cannot expect that I take longer
  to help him solve his problem than he is ready to work on it himself.
  Therefore, many of my responses are: background reading, mailing list
  archives, search Zope.org...

When you think that weakens the community and you want to change something,
then you are invited to take over where I (and others) stop.


Dieter