Timeline for Refusing to give teh codez, good or bad practice?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
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| Mar 29, 2014 at 19:59 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod | @mark0978 A "complete answer" is NOT THE SAME THING as a cut and paste solution. It is unacceptable in my mind to coddle and spoon feed the folks who want a cut-and-paste solution: A system administrator who cannot think on their feet and can only post a question and cut/paste the answer with no underlying understanding of what's going on is less than worthless - they're DANGEROUS. It has never been our goal (or any other entity in the pro sysadmin realm) to cater to those folks. Go read meta.serverfault.com/questions/5475 & meta.serverfault.com/questions/4111 | |
| Mar 29, 2014 at 14:39 | comment | added | boatcoder | Why is it so unacceptable to provide a complete answer @voretaq7? Is this part of that mindset "It was difficult for me, it should be difficult for you too?" Or is it part of the Wizard of OZ mindset that keeps all the details behind the curtain. SO has a friendly set of world class pros (in the truest sense of the word) that are there to help other people in a very open way and it works wonderfully. In contrast SF comes across like a bunch of angry old men gathering around the BPOE to complain about peole that are trying to learn. Makes it seem like SF is peopled by the Tea Party. | |
| Mar 28, 2014 at 21:48 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod | @JohnP.Fisher I have no problem pointing someone toward the right command as you describe in your comment, particularly when the documentation is inadequate or misleading. I DO have a problem when folks seem to expect me to point them to the command, then take their hand and carefully guide their index finger to poke every key in the right order, which seems to be what folks are expecting these days. Folks are coming here expecting us to give them 100% complete cut-and-paste solutions like they can get on Stack Overflow - that to me is unacceptable. | |
| Mar 28, 2014 at 21:16 | comment | added | John P. Fisher | I think @Triynko has a point. I am often looking for cookbook answers, in the sense of " you need to use modprobe blahblahblah" because some essential detail or often workaround did not appear in the documentation. Libvirt documentation for example is very thorough and often confusing. It doesn't do anything to teach context, and this is a perfect place to provide that but the user also needs some explicit help- "use attach-disk not attach-device". Also I am seeing a lot of people for whom English is not their first language - they need an extra break. | |
| Mar 25, 2014 at 21:19 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod | @Triynko Sorry, but IMO you're wrong, and the attitude of "hand me a full step-by-step solution!" is absolutely wrong. Server Fault is here to TEACH people - to ensure that they have an understanding of why things work the way they do and can apply that understanding to solve problems. If someone needs an expedient solution and is expecting us to say "type these commands in this order and it will all magically work for you" they need to hire a consultant or find a new line of work - that kind of cookie-cutter system administration has no place in the profession. | |
| Mar 25, 2014 at 21:04 | comment | added | Triynko | Professional or not, the ACTUAL steps required to complete something are often mindboggling and littered with a history of workarounds that just don't exist in the original documentation. Providing any kind of incomplete solution just renders an answer useless IMO. An incomplete answer will not save anyone time, and people coming here for answers are probably trying to save time after wasting too much looking at unhelpful documentation. I generally always provide working code if possible. | |
| Mar 25, 2014 at 15:36 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod |
@MattBianco A lot of work has been done to make "the rules" more obvious, like big obnoxious banners for unregistered/new users. If we go much further we're going to be in "punch the monkey" ad territory, with blinking borders and autoloading sounds. We've got 2 "help" links for everyone else, and a badge for reading through all of /help -- hard to provide more encouragement unless we start using a taser on people who don't read it :-)
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| Mar 25, 2014 at 13:51 | comment | added | MattBianco | I think the site "rules" are too easy to miss. Especially for the kind of people who ask this type of questions. It was a long time ago that I registered, so maybe it is apparent for a new user, but perhaps they forget or too easily click past the site description. I know for sure that I in my daily use never stumble across the site description. Apart from that, I recall moderator candidates mentioning their evolving from "do-it-for-me"-asker to well-adjusted site citizen more than once. So, I let my daily form decide if I educate or ignore the question. | |
| Mar 22, 2014 at 2:17 | comment | added | canadmos | Don't forget to mention to take the coffee cup out of the cd tray, if needed. I agree though, professionals who have at the very least a vague understanding of what they are trying to accomplish should only need to be pointed towards relevant documentation. | |
| Mar 20, 2014 at 21:20 | history | answered | voretaq7Mod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
