Newsgroup mood

[Brian van den Broek]

Israel Raj T said unto the world upon 2004-11-06 16:01:
> Brian van den Broek <bvande at po-box.mcgill.ca> writes:
> 
> 
>> (I recall a post I made to a LUG asking for help with an aborted
>> attempt to get Linux and my laptop's Winmodem to co-operate. I was
>> flamed because my mail headers indicated that I was using
>> Thunderbird on *Windows* -- the horror! --
> 
> 
> Or perhaps because you had not read the many available resources on
> using winmodems under linux.
> 
> BTW, if you are looking for a decent mail client check out gnus. Of
> the over 20 mail clients that I have used over the years, this is the
> best.

Perhaps. But the context was that I was a Linux neophyte (not much
beyond that now), identified myself as such, made sure to manifest that
I'd tried and failed to sort it out for myself, and did my best to
appear to be asking for help learning to fish, rather than to be handed
a cooked trout. :-) (As in, I'd read and tried to follow the advice of
Raymond's essay.)

I'm certain that the sort of care I put into asking the question made it
fall outside the scope of the comments about newbie questions made
up-thread. I've yet to see a Python list so react to someone who made it
clear they were trying to follow the norms, even if they didn't meet
with complete success. I think the issue is about those who don't try to
follow courteous practise, and perhaps aren't aware they aren't.

Any project, Linux, Python, whatever, that aims to get a user base
beyond the gurus has to accept that not everyone who needs help will be
able to work everything out based on what they can find on-line. (It is
clear to me that Python lists *do* accept this.) The problem isn't with
those who get stuck after trying for themselves; it those who hit send
before search :-)

But thanks for the comment, and the client pointer. Best,

Brian vdB