On 21/09/2010 06:05, William "Chops" Westfield wrote:
> On Sep 20, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Olin Lathrop wrote:
>
>> To those who often say you should just ignore stupid questions, this
>> is one reason it doesn't work.  There is always someone out there
>> that tries to answer it anyway, so the questioner gets a answer and
>> the lesson isn't learned.
> I believe the idea is that YOU, singular (Olin) should ignore
> questions that are so stupid that you find them annoying.  (or any
> other PARTICULAR person who feels likewise.)
>
> There are (usually) other people who may be willing to gently guide
> the clueless person through clarifying their question and even coming
> up with an answer.  Maybe the questioner will learn something, maybe
> they'll remain clueless.  You've made it clear that this sort of
> education is not something you're good at, nor something you want to
> be good at, nor something you want to do at all.  That's fine; not
> everyone needs to do everything.  It's not worth the aggravation to
> you, nor the belittlement of the questioner, for you to do anything
> OTHER than ignore it; silence is probably just as educational in most
> respects.  Sit back and wait for sufficiently well formulated
> questions on hard topics, where your input is more valuable, more
> appreciated, and more enjoyable for you!
>
> I'm working on a hypothesis that says that a large percentage of
> relatively clueless people are important to forming a "community."  If
> you compare something like the Arduino forums to the TI E2E forums (or
> even to AVRFreaks, which is a more direct comparison), the first is
> (IMO) much more successful (as a "community.")  I think it has to do
> with the near-beginners being able to answer questions for the real-
> beginners, so the non-beginners get less frustrated answering the same
> question over and over again...
>
> BillW
>
You may have a few good points there.
I'm reminded of the saying to Seekers:
"If you find the perfect Church, don't join it".
Successful, dynamic growing on-line communities are always going to have=20
what seems like a lot of idiots. The real idiots or trolls, with time=20
get banned or go away. Other "idiots" turn out to be really great folk=20
that help the community grow.

--=20
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.