Re: Re: Is SEQ Working?????
Quote:
Originally posted by wolfy
many people like yourself can figure things out for themselves, but there are many people who can't. It should be down to the people who can, that help these new users, and not encourage attacks on them.
Remember this: There is a difference between those that Can't and those that Won't help themselves.
We have no obligation to spoon feed those that won't make an effort to help themselves. In this forum there is virtually no reason that someone can't help themselves, yet there seem to be many people that seem incapable of doing just that. I put forth that these people choose not to help themselves. We give them a hand up, we point them towards the goal, yet they won't take the steps to get there.
Re: Re: Re: Is SEQ Working?????
Quote:
Originally posted by S_B_R
Remember this: There is a difference between those that Can't and those that Won't help themselves.
We have no obligation to spoon feed those that won't make an effort to help themselves. In this forum there is virtually no reason that someone can't help themselves, yet there seem to be many people that seem incapable of doing just that. I put forth that these people choose not to help themselves. We give them a hand up, we point them towards the goal, yet they won't take the steps to get there.
yes, i agree, but there is a way to handle these things.
if someone is shouted at, made to look an idiot, they will reply in the same manner, get antagonistic, and flame back.
if you were just to kindly reply, "please search for blah-blah" you will find what you are looking for. the post will slide away to oblivion, and you will have one more happy forum user, instead of someone out to bite your head off.
Differences between flammable and nonflammable questions...
As a high school teacher, I frequently answer the same questions over and over and over again.
Granted, though I am a technical sort (before teaching math, I was a perfeshinal kampyooter geek), I am also in the business of helping people to learn things. And there is such a thing as a valid, completely stupid, question.
When a student just doesn't "get it" for some reason, and a question is asked, I transform into "kindly teacher" mode, and do everything in my power to ensure that the student will end up, when I walk away from his or her desk, "getting it." Even if the problem preventing the "getting it" is one of the student thinking a rectangle is a triangle, and just misreading it, or reading the instructions wrong, or just not understanding something which, to 95% of the human race, is totally obvious. This is a situation where the student is trying, but failing. The question or problem may seem obvious to me, but, hell, I've taught the class for three years, and taken about 14 semesters of calculus.
(well, maybe 6)
When, on the other hand, I say to the class, "I want you to work on Investigation 1 on page 326 Let's wrap it up in 15 minutes and then discuss it," and write on my whiteboard in great big letters "Invest. 1, P. 326 - 15 Minutes" and then a student looks up and says, "What page are we working on?"
Well, let's just say...
Your faction standing with Math Teachers of Rifle could not possibly get any worse.
/tar Math_Teacher[01]
/con
A Math Teacher scowls at you, ready to attack. What do you want your tombstone to say?
See the difference? On the one hand, it's an attempt by someone who doesn't know as much as you to get help to learn more. On the other, it's a total loser brain fart who couldn't win a battle of wits with a soap dish.
It's much the same here, I think...
Any message that starts with, "I searched for opcode, decode, and packet decode and came up fruitless with an answer to the following question..." [follows is a question that would NOT be answered by such a search, or to which such a search would not only yield the answer sought, but to 37 million other answers -- a brain-dead search, but well-intentioned...]
Here's an example where the knowledgeable amongst us can go into Kindly Teacher mode. An earnest person, might suck at searching, but still, this person is trying. We temper the flames... Modify our response which initially might be "You total freaking moron! How could you expect such a suck-ass search to..." to, "Nice try, and what you might want to try again is a search on [appropriate keyword goes here]. This problem is well documented. You should have no trouble finding it... If you need help, post here again..."
Same idea, same information movement, WORLD of difference in efficacy.
IF you get pissed at people who ask valid, yet totally stupid questions, THEY WILL NOT LEARN. THEY WILL NOT GET BETTER... THEY WILL ONLY HATE YOU. They will stop asking intelligent questions, stop learning, and any future hope of their contributing to the community is lost forever (or at least the probability of such future contribution is reduced dramatically).
Of course, if that's what you want, then you're probably a pinhead.
If someone asks a totally stupid question, that's NOT the result of an earnest attempt at learning, then you rip 'em a new one, humilate them in front of their classmates, or, as I did on one occasion (something I'm not at all proud of, it happened when I was a substitute for an 8th grade math teacher) make some poor girl cry (and when I did it, it was a question of the first type... I was a real asshole that day... Something I try very hard to prevent being... My life sorta changed when I saw that girl start to cry...)
Anyhoo... My 2 cents as a pro. educator.
-Max.