Asking Smart Questions

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

by raulk • 7 years ago

2 1 7 years ago

ordu• 7 years ago

A decade ago I used to point people with dumb questions to this guide. Now I believe I was wrong. It is good when you are facing a smart question, but to answer on a dumb one with a link to the smart question guide or to LMGTFY[1] is a no way.

If you do not like the question, you are free to ignore it. Hopefully someone else will answer. If you see that a couple of days no one is volunteered, you might want to nicely point people to a local faq or to a guide. It is not that hard.

But mostly I dislike this guide due to a stance Raymond and Rick took: "we are cool smart and busy hackers, so go google, search for answer in a mailing lists (mostly completely unusable), read the manual (a few dozens of pages with a good chance to not find any answers), and complete a couple of other rituals to deserve a right to ask us". Go jump to a lake with your arrogance. I'll ask someone else.

Asking Smart Questions

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