Re: How to get a reply on this list?

[Richard Troy <rt...@ScienceTools.com>]

Eric,

I've been using the internet since about 1980, long before it was called
the internet. Around the same time, my father, also on the net, made an
astonishing comment to me one day about this. He said that you can ask
your question and all too often you're just whispering in the wind. If you
want to get a reply, he said, just post the WRONG DATA! Everyone will come
out of the wood-work to correct you! ...I have always eschewed that
advice, but I have to acknowledge that it's usually true!

The usual reasons people don't respond are many, including simply not
knowing the answers. Maybe your question takes too much time, or whatever.
Then, there's the "hackers code", which essentially says that you don't
help people who are too lazy to have done their homework. On the
presumption that someone actually knows how to help you, your post has to
tell them, "look, I've really tried hard here," so they feel you deserve
their time. It helps if you really have tried hard and have studdied up.

Another angle is to phraise the problem in a way that may be interesting
to people. Word choice plays an important role. I'm not saying I'm any
good at this either, my posts have gone unanswered as well. I don't take
it against anyone, though it can be disconcerting and disappointing,
especially if you see "adjacent" questions getting answered. Or worse,
questions where clearly the asker hadn't done their homework getting
answered.

Then, there are those who chime in but don't or can't help. Micael Padraig
Og mac Grene <ca...@harbornet.com> is to be lauded for his offer to
look at your problem if you'd post it again. THAT's a great attitude. You
get those in the middle like Sriram Narayanan <sr...@yahoo.com>
whose post was of more dubious value. It wasn't clear to me if Sriram was
really trying to be helpful or not. And then you get those that mock you,
people like Weiqi Gao <we...@networkusa.net>. My take on the, "did you
say please" post was that it was exceptionally rude, though you took it
with good cheer. Bravo for you.

I guess you could count me among the group who are posting but who aren't
necessarily very helpful. I'm just as frustrated as you are. I've spent
something like two weeks focused on nothing but getting my Tomcat
environment configured the way I need it to be, and it's far from done.
There's a lot of learning going on, and I'm learning a lot just from
reading the list, but I've also been doing my homework as best I can. A
200+ inbound email load just from this list doesn't help, especially when
the same Apache/Tc connector questions get asked and answered a few
hundred times in the course of a week. I can't help but think the
newsgroup forum is a better one than this e-list because of how it will
reduce the time we spend wading through tonnes of email! (It's also
absolutely clear that some of these qustions can be headed off with better
installation documentation - If I knew how to write it, I would!)

...All that said, though, I'm still slugging away, trying to set up my
environment. In my case, I've been doing my homework and will continue to
do so, and if I don't get any help from the list, oh well - nobody here
owes me an answer! From my view, as someone who has been working in
computer science for over twenty years (though I'm only 36), the
documentation for Tomcat is written by people who know too much about it
and the documents haven't gotten good review from people who are new to
the subject - which are the people who most need the documentation! But,
this is nothing new at all in Computer Science! There are so few examples
of good documentation in our community that most people have never had
exposure to truly good documentation. And that's why anything that really
rates as mediocre gets lauded as wonderful. (I mean this as no slam. CS
has special problems in this regard. It's just fact - or my opinion at
least!)

But I digress. ...I'll do my part. I've already answered a few questions
from folks whose posts seemed to be ignored. This is a tiny contribution,
but it's a step in the right direction. And you can be absolutely sure
that if/when I stumble across answers to my own problems, I'll post em on
the list so they're there in the archives for those that follow me. We can
only do the best we can do... And remember, nobody here holds malice
against you!

Good luck in your endeavours and don't be discouraged,

RT

-- 
Richard Troy, Chief Scientist
Science Tools Corporation
rtroy@ScienceTools.com, 510-567-9957, http://ScienceTools.com/

> Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 05:53:29 +0000
> From: Eric Strain <er...@hotmail.com>
> Subject: How to get a reply on this list?
>
> Hi All:
> for some reason none of my questions are being answered on this list.
> am I doing something wrong???
>


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RE: How to get a reply on this list?

[Jim Rueschhoff <jr...@imsurenetwork.com>]

I also do not know the question at hand, but in general I ignore all
questions that have already been asked and answered dozens of times.  There
are plenty of resources out there for people to review past discussions to
find answers.  I also ignore questions that I am clueless about.  If the
person's question falls into one of those two categories then that is why I
did not respond to it.

In general, to get an answer, ask a question that (1) hasn't been discussed
to death already, (2) is interesting enough to be worth while answering and
(3) that pertains to the actual topic of the list.  For instance, asking why
images of a java application that are stored in a jar file are not being
found may be interesting but do not have anything to do with JSP and thus
will be ignored by many.

Remember that this a not a paid support service.  The people here are
volunteering their time and expertise.  You can not expect or demand an
answer to any question you might choose to raise.  If you ask a question and
someone responds with a good idea then you are lucky.  If not then you have
to look elsewhere for an answer.  If no one knows the answer or no one
understands the question as stated, do not expect an answer.



-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Troy [mailto:rtroy@ScienceTools.com]
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 9:19 AM
To: Tomcat Users List
Cc: Eric Strain; Trefor Gare; Pradeep Sethi
Subject: Re: How to get a reply on this list?



Eric,

I've been using the internet since about 1980, long before it was called
the internet. Around the same time, my father, also on the net, made an
astonishing comment to me one day about this. He said that you can ask
your question and all too often you're just whispering in the wind. If you
want to get a reply, he said, just post the WRONG DATA! Everyone will come
out of the wood-work to correct you! ...I have always eschewed that
advice, but I have to acknowledge that it's usually true!

The usual reasons people don't respond are many, including simply not
knowing the answers. Maybe your question takes too much time, or whatever.
Then, there's the "hackers code", which essentially says that you don't
help people who are too lazy to have done their homework. On the
presumption that someone actually knows how to help you, your post has to
tell them, "look, I've really tried hard here," so they feel you deserve
their time. It helps if you really have tried hard and have studdied up.

Another angle is to phraise the problem in a way that may be interesting
to people. Word choice plays an important role. I'm not saying I'm any
good at this either, my posts have gone unanswered as well. I don't take
it against anyone, though it can be disconcerting and disappointing,
especially if you see "adjacent" questions getting answered. Or worse,
questions where clearly the asker hadn't done their homework getting
answered.

Then, there are those who chime in but don't or can't help. Micael Padraig
Og mac Grene <ca...@harbornet.com> is to be lauded for his offer to
look at your problem if you'd post it again. THAT's a great attitude. You
get those in the middle like Sriram Narayanan <sr...@yahoo.com>
whose post was of more dubious value. It wasn't clear to me if Sriram was
really trying to be helpful or not. And then you get those that mock you,
people like Weiqi Gao <we...@networkusa.net>. My take on the, "did you
say please" post was that it was exceptionally rude, though you took it
with good cheer. Bravo for you.

I guess you could count me among the group who are posting but who aren't
necessarily very helpful. I'm just as frustrated as you are. I've spent
something like two weeks focused on nothing but getting my Tomcat
environment configured the way I need it to be, and it's far from done.
There's a lot of learning going on, and I'm learning a lot just from
reading the list, but I've also been doing my homework as best I can. A
200+ inbound email load just from this list doesn't help, especially when
the same Apache/Tc connector questions get asked and answered a few
hundred times in the course of a week. I can't help but think the
newsgroup forum is a better one than this e-list because of how it will
reduce the time we spend wading through tonnes of email! (It's also
absolutely clear that some of these qustions can be headed off with better
installation documentation - If I knew how to write it, I would!)

...All that said, though, I'm still slugging away, trying to set up my
environment. In my case, I've been doing my homework and will continue to
do so, and if I don't get any help from the list, oh well - nobody here
owes me an answer! From my view, as someone who has been working in
computer science for over twenty years (though I'm only 36), the
documentation for Tomcat is written by people who know too much about it
and the documents haven't gotten good review from people who are new to
the subject - which are the people who most need the documentation! But,
this is nothing new at all in Computer Science! There are so few examples
of good documentation in our community that most people have never had
exposure to truly good documentation. And that's why anything that really
rates as mediocre gets lauded as wonderful. (I mean this as no slam. CS
has special problems in this regard. It's just fact - or my opinion at
least!)

But I digress. ...I'll do my part. I've already answered a few questions
from folks whose posts seemed to be ignored. This is a tiny contribution,
but it's a step in the right direction. And you can be absolutely sure
that if/when I stumble across answers to my own problems, I'll post em on
the list so they're there in the archives for those that follow me. We can
only do the best we can do... And remember, nobody here holds malice
against you!

Good luck in your endeavours and don't be discouraged,

RT

--
Richard Troy, Chief Scientist
Science Tools Corporation
rtroy@ScienceTools.com, 510-567-9957, http://ScienceTools.com/

> Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 05:53:29 +0000
> From: Eric Strain <er...@hotmail.com>
> Subject: How to get a reply on this list?
>
> Hi All:
> for some reason none of my questions are being answered on this list.
> am I doing something wrong???
>


--
To unsubscribe:   <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
Troubles with the list: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>



--
To unsubscribe:   <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
Troubles with the list: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>