Re (tilly) 2: Beware the Trolls!

[tilly]

Your list of possibilities is incomplete.

The one you miss which most closely matches my opinion is that in order to share we want to encourage behaviour which leads to learning. Answering good questions and refusing to answer thoughtless ones both aim for this goal.

Indeed if I wanted to discourage lazy people from learning I would follow Dominus' memorable advice.

[defyance]

"encourage behaviour which leads to learning."

Amen I can agree with this whole heartedly. I only have one thing to say about it.

Does this encourage senior members to hastily give the cold shoulder to someone that may not be looking for an immediate answer, but just didn't know how to phrase the question? I haven't seen this personally, just speaking hypothetically.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity.

[tilly]

I would like to say "No", but mistakes do happen.

The problem is that it takes some skill and sometimes more than a little guesswork to tell which questions are likely to be from someone who really doesn't know better, and which are likely to be from someone who probably has the resources to answer their own question, but is feeling lazy. So there are cases of mistaken identity.

My two rules of thumb are to assume the best, and to try to answer the question I think the person should be asking rather than the one they are. Frequently that will mean that rather than give an answer, I explain how to find the documentation, and give hints on where in the documentation the answer is likely to be found. That tends to work pretty well. If they were just lazy, that discourages asking me. If not, it allows them to answer their question, while giving them tools to answer the next one.j