Weblog entry #191 for ajt
See all weblog entries made by ajt.
Spotted a a link to ask.debian.net today. Interesting site, alas a few pretty lame questions and answers in the mix too. When people ask really stupid things or give really stupid answers it's sometimes hard to get them back on the straight and narrow without sounding rude. If you don't try and help them, then the stupidity just gets propagated.
I've nothing against newbies or newbie popular distros like Ubuntu, but sometimes you do see really bad advice on Ubuntu forums when you are doing a Google search for something...!
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But you are right, this has a negative influence on the quality of the website...if the questions are more stupid the rtfm.
Anyway, ask.debian.net looks very useful with its tags und status tracking.
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While I try to ignore the stupid questions, I can't help myself in trying to give sensible answers, and to try and wean people off silly ideas. If you don't try then they will get a stupid answer from someone else and the stupidity is passed on...
However the site doesn't look too bad other than SPAM, which is just a case of reporting to keep the signal to noise ratio up.
While I do like this site, I think sites like ask.debian.net and commanlinefu.com are useful for quick questions and answers in their area, much in the way that Perlmonks.org is for Perl.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
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