to newcomers: please try to solve the problem yourself beforeasking

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Beej-in-GA wrote:

> For the information of Mr. Marius and Mister Robert P. J. Day, it is 
> very hard to do a google search and /or consult the (NON EXISTENT) 
> manual when you don't know what question to ask or anything but the 
> symptom you are seeing.

oh, man, i hate it when people accuse me of something i never said.

1) if you can't handle a google search, chances are, you shouldn't be 
allowed anywhere near computers or heavy machinery without 
supervision.  really.  there's a box.  you type words into it.
and i never even mentioned google in my previous post -- i was 
concentrating on even more basic, mundane things.

2) if you don't even know what question to ask, well, see step 1). 
even newbies should be able to ask a basic question by providing 
enough information to allow us to help.

what's acceptable for a newbie question would be something like, "i 
was trying to install FC2 on a whiz-bang 5000 laptop, and it got to 
<this> step and began belching smoke.  should i have expected this?"

what's *not* acceptable is something like, "i want to try FC, and a 
friend gave me some CDs.  what do i do now?"  *that's* a sign of 
someone who has put *zero* effort into figuring out what they're 
supposed to be doing, and wants the mailing list to do all of their 
work for them.

   if you don't even know what question you're supposed to be asking, 
well, see step 1).  if you don't put in even the most minimal effort 
to figure out, well, what you're trying to figure out, you're not 
going to get a sympathetic response.

rday

p.s.  and please don't ask us to do your homework. :-)