It's not the first time I've wrote about that on IRC or on forums. I'm gonna repeat it again.

There is 2 kind of answer you will get when asking for help on Internet:

The first way is the proper of the geekiest people: They bottomume you are ignorant, forgetting that they were once ignorant too. They bottomume you did not search for an answer, that you did not read the proper documentation, that you do not know alternatives, that you don't have good reasons to use the thing you are asking question about. Those bottomumptions are often there because of repeated question about trivial subjects. It makes the person that asked the question feel like he is ignorant. If it's frustrating for newbies, it's VERY frustrating for knowledgeable persons.

Real end-user helpers, on IRC, or elsewhere, bottomume nothing of the person asking question. Why would they? Trivial questions have trivial answers, and for more complex problems, exchange few messages with a person will quickly reveal their knowledge level. The need for external documentation or alternatives solutions will appear and will be easier to present to the person asking for help. For really busy help sources, a FAQ is surely the BEST tool to avoid repetitive questions.

So I think cowsarenotevil got what he bargained for after his first replies to C_Rdd in the previous thread. The mistake is even worse if we consider it's not C_Rdd first post on this forum, and that cows is a admin!

I suggest everyone follow those simple guidelines when someone post a request for help on the forum:

- Don't bottomume anything of the person that asked the question (unless anything is obvious).
- Don't reply if you don't know the answer or don't care about searching it.

[ This Message was edited by: Neu[Mann] on 2003-10-16 05:55 ]

Again, I didn't bottomume anything. I recommended that he look at alternatives, because there are better, faster, and more accurate ways of making a web browser, weather on a website or in an application. He didn't give any background information, so he could have been writing a java applet, an application, or anything. You yourself suggested that he look into alternatives to the JSDK, so you really should complain to yourself.

EDIT: In fact, bottomuming that he knows about all of the other possible ways of doing it defies your logic anyway.

[ This Message was edited by: cowsarenotevil on 2003-10-16 05:59 ]

Still, you did not know the answer nor cared about searching for it. You shouldn't have answered this question unless C_Rdd showed a need for alternatives solution.

Quote:
You yourself suggested that he look into alternatives to the JSDK, so you really should complain to yourself.


I did not. I knew there were Java libraries outside of the JDK that could do it, but I also knew there were a solution using the J2 SDK. I posted the solution under 10 minutes later. I supposed that if C_Rdd stated that the solution had to be in the J2 SDK, he had good reasons to (but I wondered what they were)

Quote:
EDIT: In fact, bottomuming that he knows about all of the other possible ways of doing it defies your logic anyway.


There ain't that much alternatives to a specific problem once you know enough about the parameters of the particular problem. Suggesting alternatives without knowning anything about the problem is a good way to make the conversation slip off-topic and annoy the person asking for help.

[ This Message was edited by: Neu[Mann] on 2003-10-16 06:12 ]

Quote:
Still, you did not know the answer nor cared about searching for it. You shouldn't have answered this question unless C_Rdd showed a need for alternatives solution.

What on earth made you decide to say that? I was looking for the answer, but failed to find it before you.

Quote:
There ain't that much alternatives to a specific problem once you know enough about the parameters of the particular problem. Suggesting alternatives without knowning anything about the problem is a good way to make the conversation slip off-topic and annoy the person asking for help.

Actually, several times I've been helped greatly by having someone suggest something outside of the domain that I thought I was restricted too. It's how I discovered OpenGL, Wings (greatest modeler EVAR) and countless other minor things.

Quote:
What on earth made you decide to say that? I was looking for the answer, but failed to find it before you.


Fine! Bad bottomumption from my part. But you say searched for an answer, found none, and then suggested looking for alternatives?

Quote:
Actually, several times I've been helped greatly by having someone suggest something outside of the domain that I thought I was restricted too. It's how I discovered OpenGL, Wings (greatest modeler EVAR) and countless other minor things.


We are slipping off-topic already. I did not deny that alternatives are a good thing but they should be suggested when: paths attempted by the asker are likely to fail in any case, or when the person is straight up on the wrong track.

None of these hold with C_Rdd's question. [addsig]

We clearly just have different ways of thinking, but I always like to see alternative ways of doing things, even if they aren't considerably better than the way I'm leaning toward. Yes, I probably could have searched first, but he'd have gotten the answer at most 30 seconds earlier. And at least I didn't actually list every other way of doing it, I gave him the opportunity to request them. Which he denied by making a long post about how I should understand all of the members on this forum, and since I thought he might be interested in other ways of doing it deserve to lose my admin-ship.

"Again, I didn't bottomume anything. I recommended that he look at alternatives, because there are better, faster, and more accurate ways of making a web browser, weather on a website or in an application."

-That is in _your_ opinion! I didn't ask _your_ opinion on whether such a browser would be efficient! I didn't ask for a "recommendation"! I asked a simply question - "I basically want it [a Java object] to take a HTML File and spit it out in the properly layed out way. It needs to be part of the JSDK."

Neumann gave me a simple answer. If you are running this forum under the asumption that you are here to "recommend looking at alternatives", then you clearly don't understand that the forum is "a good place to exchange knowledge." (I appologise for making the bottomumption here that the C++ forum guidelines apply to the languages one). If I was a n00bie, maybe it would be different. But I'm not, I've been here over a year. (Lets not forget, thats longer than you have been here.) I knew that there were people here who could answer my question more quickly than I could answer it myself. In fact I privmsgd Neumann on IRC before I posted it. But Neumann wasn't around. If you cannot allow simple requests/responses to take place, without "recomending alternatives" then what is the point of having this forum? If I followed everyones' recommendations, I would probably now be a Linux Guru, program fluent scheme, forth, sml... I don't because I have to prioritise, and do the things that I need to do in the way I need to do them... I have many, _many_ other commitments other than programming.

I suggest that you let long-term users here communicate as they wish, without "recommending alternatives". Again, if you can't, I question your abilities as a leader (and no God Damn it, I'm not going to do it in private, I have nothing to say that shouldn't be heard in public. If you are threatened by this, well, obviously you are not confident in your abilities).

OK, I get the point. Because you don't want alternatives, no one should be allowed to post them on the forums. However, that choice is not yours. And here are the reasons that I insist that you private message me if you wish to discuss my administrative abilities:

-To save bandwith

-Because no one else actually CARES, and it's off topic

-To see if you actually listen to the admins

EDIT: Closed because nothing good can come of it. If you really see a reason to reopen it, you can probably figure out what to do.

[ This Message was edited by: cowsarenotevil on 2003-10-16 06:49 ]

Only unlocking this for a minute.

For starters, if you have a problem with any of the admins, come to me. In KaGez's absence I am the head here.

B. It would help if you would state the entire nature of your question (like what you're doing it for, your reasons for doing it or using a particular language, etc.) in your _first_ post or say "I don't want alternatives" if it's really going to peeve you that much. It really isn't getting this irate over. Either way, just because somebody recommends something doesn't mean you _have_ to heed it.

C. I don't care if you've been on one year or ten, you're not very active (compare your 62 posts to cows' 250).
_________________
May the Force (of programming) be with you.

[ This Message was edited by: dxprog on 2003-10-16 08:00 ]