[Zope] Re: Disgraceful

Fri Sep 24 15:30:35 EDT 2004

Wow... apologies to all.

It was never my intent to denigrate, demean or insult.  I was attempting  to
suggest that people who made attempts at solving their problem would
probably receive more informed help (because they would be able to say what
they tried and what didn't work - ie. error messages, tracebacks etc).  I
only mentioned this because I believe that this is an excellent list and the
quality of the responses (and the posters of those responses) is first rate
and I hope that it will stay that way.

I whole-heartedly agree with the comment about "teaching someone to fish,
rather than giving them a fish to eat".  With that in mind I would like to
propose that list participants collectively create a thread which provides a
list of potential sources of information and methods of finding solutions.

As a start...

1) As Dieter often says "Google is your friend".  You can just enter key
phrases into google for a general search or you can use the syntax:
site:www.zope.org followed by your search term to get pages specifically
from the zope site (this syntax will work for any web site)

2) Mailing list archives that can be searched:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Browse/Threaded/zope-List

http://www.dzug.org/mailinglisten/zope-org-zope/

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=zope

3) Other zope sites

http://www.zopelabs.com/

http://www.zopezen.org/

http://www.plone.org/

http://www.my-zope.org/

http://www.zopezone.com/

http://www.zopewiki.org/ZopeWiki

http://www.dieter.handshake.de/pyprojects/zope/

4) Documentation

http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/

http://www.plope.com/Books/2_7Edition

http://plone.org/documentation/

5) Python Tips/Tricks

- create an external method that uses the python dir command to get
information about variables and methods that are available to classes, etc.

This is just a quick 'off-the-top-of-my-head' list and I hope that others
can flesh it out, so that more fishermen (fisherpersons?) can enjoy the full
benefits of a tremendous platform (I'm talking about zope :)

Jonathan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Manheimer" <klm at zope.com>
To: <zope at zope.org>
Sent: September 24, 2004 1:47 PM
Subject: [Zope] Re: Disgraceful

> "Tiller, Michael (M.M.)" <mtiller at ford.com> writes (i'm excerpting out of
> order):
>
> > 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 recommend that everyone cool down here.
>
> You accuse "arrogance and stubborness" about refusing to help against
> someone who has provided not just valuable answers, but also much software
> on which the questioners rely.  In this particular case, andreas *had*
> provided an answer, but it wasn't to the questioners liking!  That was
when
> andreas spouted that the questioner should look at the API.
>
> > 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
>
> I have to agree that knowing *where* to look for stuff can be hard.  Maybe
> indicating where to look is the extra step andreas could have taken to
> provide guidance - but the questioner was using the software, presumably
> they knew where to look for the API.
>
> > Please explain to me why the mailing list should be a
> > solution-of-last-result???  After all, you can find the solution to
>
> This is a fundamental issue in programming.  It's about "teaching someone
> to fish, rather than giving them a fish to eat".  There is a balance to be
> struck - questions are not forbidden (hence the list, in the first
place!).
> Jonathon hobbes chimed in, objecting to people using the list as
> 'solution-of-first-resort' - some evidence of due diligence on the part of
> the questioner is necessary so that the answerers know the questioners are
> doing what they can to "learn to fish".
>
> I don't follow this group often, so don't know whether this suggestion is
> necessary, but i would always like to see answers that include pointers to
> key resources where the answers were found, and "RTFM" responses that give
> clues about where those resources are.  But list-as-first-resort does
*not*
> scale.
>
> Ken Manheimer
> klm at zope.com
>
> Just to try to avoid unintended distortion due to picking my excerpts out
> of order, here's the entire message to which i'm responding:
>
> "Tiller, Michael (M.M.)" <mtiller at ford.com>
>
> > <rant>
> > 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.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > ***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.
> >
> > 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.
> > </rant>
>
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