Re (tilly) 4: Beware the Trolls!

[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