[Tutor] A rant about Tutor homework policy

[Danny Yoo]

On Sun, 15 Jun 2003, Abel Daniel wrote:

> Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
> > It has been a while since I saw the "welcome to this list" email, does it
> > comment on this policy?  Perhaps the text on the website should as well.
> No, it doesn't. I guess it should.

Hi Abel,


It does make an indirect pass at it.  Here's what it says:


    """Note that no one is paid to read the tutor list or provide answers,
and most readers often have other work that demands their attention.
Well-posed requests for help are usually answered fairly promptly, but
occasionally a request slips by, so if you do not get a response with one
or two working days (it's usually quicker than that), please feel free to
send a followup, asking whether anyone is working on your question."""



> I think it could also link to
> http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html That faq mostly covers
> the same things as the 'welcome to this list' email, but it is more
> verbose. (This verbosity might be a drawback: what is the chance of
> somebody reading a long text like that after sending a two-line
> question?)

True.  Ok, I've added the lines:

"""There's a HOWTO that shows how to ask "smart" questions to technical
folks:

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

Although it is provocative, it does have some good points, and is an
interesting read."""


to the "welcome to this list" email.



> And while we are at it, I think that 'welcome to this list' email should
> be linked from the list's description page at
> http://python.org/psa/MailingLists.html#tutor (and maybe at
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor).

Yes.  What we need is some permanent web space where we can put up pages
like that.  I talked with Wesley Chun about this about a week ago;  we'll
see what we can do about this.