Re: Is this the right way to learn?

I'm a llama when it comes to Perl. But when it comes to helping people, I might as well state that I moderate a nice gaming forum, so I'm familiar with people asking questions that have such easy answers.

To boil everything down, I just try to follow the How to Ask Questions the Right Way coupled with the, "we don't do your homework," that other developer forums follow.

But yeah, I'd imagine that knowing how to find your own answers is much more valuable than knowing how to hit the Preview then Create buttons. Really, honestly, I use the Search feature here more than anything else. I can't stay at any website that doesn't have a decent search engine (barring my own defective forums search engine :-\ )

However, understanding how many people searching for answers function, it borders on pointless to even show them how. I can't tell you how often I've linked to a page that has the answer they're looking for and their somehow eyes glaze over when they hit the blue underlined portions.

Is it fair to stick a link to my site here?

Thanks for you patience.

Comment on Re: Is this the right way to learn?

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How to give advice the wrong way by tilly (Archbishop) on Oct 16, 2003 at 06:46 UTC
I'm puzzled about why people continue to recommend How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. Sure, the advice given is accurate. It would be great if everyone took it. That isn't the problem. The problem is that the advice is given in a way which guarantees that the purported target audience will never read and take it to heart. But they will take offence. This might make sense if your goal is to justify a division of the world into "us" vs "them", where "they" are clearly all idiots. It could well be effective at convincing people that you are a jerk to be avoided in the future. I wouldn't be entirely astounded if ESR had one or both of these goals at some level. But it is incredibly ineffective as a technique for positive behaviour modification. It is simply awful as a tone to take in dealing with anyone who might suspect, however accurately and briefly, that they aren't in your "in group". Because the first thing that it does is offend the people that you are talking to. And after being offended, they won't hear anything else that you have to say. For more on why people don't learn from being directly insulted and criticized, see What you refuse to see, is your worst trap.	[reply]

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How to give advice the wrong way
by tilly (Archbishop) on Oct 16, 2003 at 06:46 UTC

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Sure, the advice given is accurate. It would be great if everyone took it. That isn't the problem.

The problem is that the advice is given in a way which guarantees that the purported target audience will never read and take it to heart. But they will take offence.

This might make sense if your goal is to justify a division of the world into "us" vs "them", where "they" are clearly all idiots. It could well be effective at convincing people that you are a jerk to be avoided in the future. I wouldn't be entirely astounded if ESR had one or both of these goals at some level.

But it is incredibly ineffective as a technique for positive behaviour modification. It is simply awful as a tone to take in dealing with anyone who might suspect, however accurately and briefly, that they aren't in your "in group". Because the first thing that it does is offend the people that you are talking to. And after being offended, they won't hear anything else that you have to say.

For more on why people don't learn from being directly insulted and criticized, see What you refuse to see, is your worst trap.

[reply]