[gmx-users] use of the mailing list

[Mark Abraham]

On 19/08/2011 1:41 PM, Junior Nebeker wrote:
> Correct.  Other people (who are new to this list) need your help, and 
> unless their requests are way out of line, there's no reason to adopt 
> a haughty attitude in responding.

There's never a case for rudeness, but when (for example) people have 
been asking questions on the mailing list for years and still haven't 
absorbed the advice available here http://www.gromacs.org/Support, then 
one can get frustrated. Expressing a little of that can help people 
realise how to participate more effectively in the discussion. One's 
family doctor can ask a lot of patient questions about what is wrong 
because you're paying them a lot of money. If people who might give free 
help don't feel that their time is valued, they might stop giving it. 
One way of demonstrating this is to ask questions that show one's 
willingness to work on the problem by providing lots of relevant 
diagnostic information. See 
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Mark

P.S. I'm not intending to express particular criticism of the original 
poster in this thread

>
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Mark Abraham <Mark.Abraham at anu.edu.au 
> <mailto:Mark.Abraham at anu.edu.au>> wrote:
>
>     On 19/08/2011 9:32 AM, Junior Nebeker wrote:
>
>
>         Hey mark,
>
>         If you are really sick of asking people for such information,
>         why do you even care to respond to this mailing list?
>
>
>     Because I'd rather teach someone to fish than either give them
>     fish or watch them starve.
>
>
>     Mark
>     -- 
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