On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 13:01, Alan Dayley wrote:
> (Craig is a good guy.  Gave me my first set of Red Hat disks.  He really believes in the Open philosophy of learning and doing things on your own if you can.  Most of the rest of us are a little softer on that point.)
> 
----
Thanks Alan,

Anthony sent me a private email on this thinking that I was being harsh.

I most assuredly wasn't trying to be harsh but I use Eric Raymond's
guide on "How to Ask Smart Questions"
<http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

Where it makes it absolutely clear...

- DON'T POST HOMEWORK QUESTIONS

and...

Before asking a technical question by email, or in a newsgroup, or on a
website chat board, do the following:

     1. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
        
     2. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
        
     3. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
        
     4. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
        
     5. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
        
     6. If you are a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the
        source code.
        

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these
things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy
sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have
learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people
who have demonstrated that they can learn from the answers.

-----
If someone else wants to spend their time doing his homework, by all
means go ahead but since he asked me if I cared to elaborate beyond my
expression to 'go for it' - I declined.

I've seen it happen time and time again in so many ways - Newbie asks -
which distro?   or newbie asks which software and never takes the time
to try things out for themselves - I think that is what Eric is
referring to as a lazy sponge.

I am more than happy to help those who are trying.

The only way that you learn any of this stuff is by doing it.

While we are on this topic though, I should point out that I don't
understand why we engage on our own spin of documenting configuration
stuff for software that already is well documented. For example, Mike's
endeavor to get into detail on MTA configuration. 

If the FAQ's and documentation for Exim/sendmail/postfix et al are
insufficient, why not help with the main body of work instead of
creating yet another FAQ that might not get maintained?

Craig