From: Mark Abraham (Mark.Abraham_at_anu.edu.au)
Date: Wed Jun 14 2006 - 09:00:45 CDT
Richard Wood wrote:
> Perhaps they HAVE tried to help themselves, but couldn't, for whatever
> reason?
Then they need to describe the steps they have taken in order that
people filtering out noise have some reason to think that this request
isn't the usual open-ended time-sink. It's THEIR problem, not the
problem of the person reading the email who is being invited to give up
their time and resources for nothing.
> Maybe some are like myself, with no affiliation to a company or
> a university, and thus, don't have access to the resources that they
> need to answer their questions. Should those people be denied help and
> given a short response such as yours? I think not.
Check your assumptions - people do not have the right to an answer to a
question on a forum such as this. People can *earn* an answer from some
users by demonstrating their mature problem-solving approach that hasn't
worked for them so far. Others might help them out of the kindness of
their hearts - but clueful users tend to be of the former variety. The
user asked for free help, part of which could have been answered by
looking in the table of contents of a document they should already have
a copy of, and part of which was not addressed to the right people -
although fortuitously, they've managed to get a useful answer from
another user. Where did they earn anything other than being ignored?
Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Wed Feb 29 2012 - 15:43:42 CST