It works at three levels:
1. Selfish... It's fine for people to play the game at level one, because they are also helping others learn and work their way up the skill ladder
Wow - that is a really cool observation. Atwood just went way up in my estimation for expressing this.
This fights against the "Go read the 2000 page manual, you idiot!"-itis found on specialist sites.
A reference manual is a terrible learning tool. It is only useful if you know what you are looking for. For that matter, it is difficult to use if you don't know the correct words to search for, as he mentions elsewhere when discussing duplicate questions.
Programmers who get off on saying RTFM are useless and should not be allowed anywhere near such discussions. If you were sitting next to the guy, you would
The "duplicate question" close always includes a link to the question it's a duplicate of. That you apparently can't see it, right there in the text, suggests you have pretty serious trouble reading and probably should look for a career and interests that don't rely on that so much.
Yeah, I'm sure to master systemd from reading its manpages.
Good documentation is hard to come by. Most of documentation out there seems to be more of a logbook where developers log their achievements and describe what they made in terms only they can understand. It's way too often unreadable for the outsiders.
A good documentation needs a document that describes the structure of the whole thing, how its elements influence each other and how the user can affect them. Provide usage patterns, examples with expl
No no no... The SO/SE help files to see that the dupes are linked to the questions which they duplicate. I've never seen one marked as a duplicate in error but I suspect there are some due to humans making errors but if it's closed as a duplicate then there's a link to the original or best suited question. Sometimes questions aren't marked as duplicates as nobody notices so you end up with some duplicated content which means you may find that the newer question has better answers.
You can also usually set a bounty on a question with existing answers if they are not to your satisfaction. It's costly in terms of karma, but it can un-bury an ancient question and attract new, better answers.
Yeah, I gotta get that badge on AU. I've got the reputation for it (I don't do it for points - I do it to learn and spend most of my time there asking questions in the comments trying to tease out the problem and don't care enough to write out solutions often - someone comes along and does it for me) so that's not a problem. I can also earn more points with editing and whatnot. Meh... I should still get the badge. They're Pokebadges. Gotta catch 'em all.
Three cheers for selfishness! (Score:2, Interesting)
It works at three levels: 1. Selfish ... It's fine for people to play the game at level one, because they are also helping others learn and work their way up the skill ladder
Wow - that is a really cool observation. Atwood just went way up in my estimation for expressing this.
Re: (Score:2)
This fights against the "Go read the 2000 page manual, you idiot!"-itis found on specialist sites.
A reference manual is a terrible learning tool. It is only useful if you know what you are looking for. For that matter, it is difficult to use if you don't know the correct words to search for, as he mentions elsewhere when discussing duplicate questions.
Programmers who get off on saying RTFM are useless and should not be allowed anywhere near such discussions. If you were sitting next to the guy, you would
Re: (Score:0)
The "duplicate question" close always includes a link to the question it's a duplicate of. That you apparently can't see it, right there in the text, suggests you have pretty serious trouble reading and probably should look for a career and interests that don't rely on that so much.
Re:Three cheers for selfishness! (Score:2)
Or, you know, maybe he should RTFM... That's not even *hard* to find.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm sure to master systemd from reading its manpages.
Good documentation is hard to come by. Most of documentation out there seems to be more of a logbook where developers log their achievements and describe what they made in terms only they can understand. It's way too often unreadable for the outsiders.
A good documentation needs a document that describes the structure of the whole thing, how its elements influence each other and how the user can affect them. Provide usage patterns, examples with expl
Re: (Score:2)
No no no... The SO/SE help files to see that the dupes are linked to the questions which they duplicate. I've never seen one marked as a duplicate in error but I suspect there are some due to humans making errors but if it's closed as a duplicate then there's a link to the original or best suited question. Sometimes questions aren't marked as duplicates as nobody notices so you end up with some duplicated content which means you may find that the newer question has better answers.
Re: (Score:2)
You can also usually set a bounty on a question with existing answers if they are not to your satisfaction. It's costly in terms of karma, but it can un-bury an ancient question and attract new, better answers.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I gotta get that badge on AU. I've got the reputation for it (I don't do it for points - I do it to learn and spend most of my time there asking questions in the comments trying to tease out the problem and don't care enough to write out solutions often - someone comes along and does it for me) so that's not a problem. I can also earn more points with editing and whatnot. Meh... I should still get the badge. They're Pokebadges. Gotta catch 'em all.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I could do without my couple "Tumbleweed"s.