From: Lloyd Linklater Date: 2008-08-09T03:42:06+09:00 Subject: Re: An introduction, in about 50 lines of Ruby. Peter Hickman wrote: > There is certainly a decline in the quality of the beginners post, they > are sometimes coming down to the subject line being the whole post and > other bitching about how no one is helping them. I am reminded of Zed's > comments and something DDH said. "We own you nothing" (to paraphrase). > Some of the beginners don't make the effort to ask for help, it is > almost as if they are throwing their cloths in the laundry basket and > expecting their mom to magically clean and fix them. Outstanding point. This goes along nicely with http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html from another thread. We want to help because we are helpful and nice people, sometimes to our misfortune. We do take time to read and answer when we can but it is not the obligation that some reactions indicate is perceived. I have gotten wonderful help here on some things and not others. That is fine. Sometimes you just need to muddle through. I know that there are posts that I automatically decline to help. When someone posts with a 'this is more than I want to figure out so I won't even try. Here, do it FOR me.' are discarded forthwith. People that ask intelligent questions that say that they tried and are running into walls and just want to get past those, them I like going the extra mile for when I can. All that to say, we might do some weeding. James Gray asked an excellent question: Trans wrote: > So I'll go out on a limb here, I respectfully request that an official > "ruby-pro" (or some such name) be created. James Gray wrote: > Will you be deciding who is a pro? Will you be preventing new users > from joining? Well, I suggest that we try letting people decide for themselves which they are. I have seen many posts where the subject line outright says that it is a noob question, so they know. I think that it would have the side benefit of letting those that are a little less of a noob to help the total noobs. That would let people look and help where they want to with a pre-filtered list. fwiw&imho -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.