ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi) (04/15/91)
> From: davidjl@eecs.ee.pdx.edu (David J Leitko) > Subject: RE: Distribution of BGI files... > To: ts@uwasa.fi > Date: Sun, 14 Apr 91 14:41:06 PDT > > I've gotten used to your rude, obnoxious responses to novice questions in > comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d, etc. As matter of fact, I am surprised when I don't > see you respond to a novice question with some condescending remark. Why > don't you try to give these guys a little respect? Remember, you were a > novice once. And to distribute mis-information simply adds injury to insult. > > I've also seen you put more effort into finding one of your programs that > demonstrates how to do something so they can "ftp it from garbo" than it > would have taken to type in the whole three line program. What a waste! > Especially when you are continuously trying to discourage people from abusing > the trans-Atlantic links to Europe. > > Now don't get me wrong, I'm not urging you to _stop_ responding to these > people, because you have been known to provide useful information. And > I know how it feels to post an intelligent question and get _no_ reply. > What I am suggesting is that you re-evaluate the attitude you portray in > your responses to FAQs and novice questions. > > Thank you. > > David Leitko > > -- > David J Leitko "Bleah!..." davidjl@eecs.cs.pdx.edu > Computer Science Department ..!uunet!tektronix!pdxgate!davidjl > Portland State University > Portland, Oregon This space intentionally left blank. I'll answer these accusations also publicly since according to your message I keep insulting users of comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d (etc) with rude, obnoxious messages. Be this as may, all feedback is naturally very welcome, also critical, and I appreciate the effort you have put into writing your feedback. I am also pleased to hear that you yet consider some of my work to have been known to be useful. As we recall from comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d moderator's (Bill Davidsen) comments, one of the problems of c.b.i.p.d. (and the other groups) is the drifting of the subjects of the messages. One of the problematic growing categories has been the "whereis" postings. There is a difficult borderline here. In many cases the user would easily find the answer, if s/he cared to look at the readily available file lists. On the other hand there are also many cases where the need of help is genuine, and then of course we should try to help. But it is often difficult to know with the scant background information given. Perhaps it is no real excuse, but I have also put in an innumerable number of hours to try to gather and anticipate questions whose answers would be of use to users, and help them (and me) to better find our way around in the net and ftp sites, and get best value out of them. I take that you find annoying my frequent references to this readily available material. I take the liberty of inferring that you especially object to my method of answering questions with pointers to where the answers are rather than giving the direct answers. There are reasons for this method. It is more generic. It means that the same answers probably do not have to be repeated so often. Whether this method takes more or less text than giving the actual, full answer is not the real issue. This is only my opinion, and many users may disagree, but I think that it is more productive in the long run to help people to know how to easily find answers to their questions rather than simply feed all the answers. Of course, there must be a balance in this. And one further obvious point. Giving pointers to answers is much easier than writing the whole answer. A pointer to answers, and the prerecorded answers are much less prone to errors than an answer written on the fly. The same naturally goes for pointing to file lists instead of trying to recall all the names of the utilities by heart, or go searching for them at this end of things. Moderating an ftp site is sometimes a thankless task, where one occasionally just gets abuse from people who expect something for nothing. I've always been amazed by people's inclination to complain about free services. There is no monetary compensation for me (nor am I looking for it) from file maintenance and distributing the files, and if I often mention my own programming work (yes, I do, I readily admit to that sin), that's the "price tag" that comes with my imposed free services. - There are, of course, also good moments in moderating, usually thanks to a rather limited, and a very dedicated brand of people who help in maitenance giving information, write and/or upload programs that the rest of the net have the opportunity to enjoy, in most cases for quite free. I recall when I started posting the download statistics from our site to comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d (which I still think had a lot of generic information value whether one uses our site or not) there was an upproar, and I decided to limit to the distribution to the users on my garbo-infolist mailing list only. Also I shifted much of my postings to be by email only, and at the same time to gather the carbon copies of these emailed "posting" for general download for those who might be interested. I'll reconsider utilizing these options still more heavily, and refrain more from public posting, if my postings are considered this offensive. As a detail, might this debacle be yet another case for splitting comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d just as Bill Davidsen has suggested. Where did that discussion vanish, anyway? In any case, my collective apologies if I have been offending the users of comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d, comp.os.msdos,programmer, and comp.lang.pascal etc with my activities and postings. That has certainly not been my intention. ................................................................... Prof. Timo Salmi Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous ftp archives 128.214.12.37 School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun
yogi@cs.ubc.ca (Joseph Gil) (04/16/91)
We should all recognize that Timo's responses are always: 1) Polite and very careful in using non-offending words. 2) Very well formulated. 3) Always informative. I think that offending a person who takes so much of his time to help the community is WRONG! I think he is entitled to promote his site and his work through this. Let me also state that in most cases (I would estimate about 70%) I disagree to Timo's exact reply, wording, reference or advice. So what! I cannot devote the time for writing a better thing myself. And I think that even if I strongly disagree with what he says, his answers are so much more well-informed and otherwise superior to the flames/rubbish/please me too/btw - this remind me of/junk replies that we get so often! Yossi
mjf@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Michael J Flory) (04/16/91)
I hope we're not in for another round of moderator-bashing. I try to be understanding when a moderator gets a little touchy about all the postings asking for readily available info -- I can't imagine the time it must take to moderate, I hardly find the time to read the postings -- but of all folks, TS seems the *most* patient and, well, courtly in his responses. And I take his references to the TS utilities, etc., as another plus, frankly. The net *is* a baffling place at first -- and at second and at third :) ... But thanks to the efforts of the (many) moderators who have written FAQ's and who regularly post the startup kits, etc., I've found my way around pretty well with a little patience. What I marvel at is that this almost utterly amorphous organization seems to be so self-organized, thanks to volunteer efforts of moderators and posters. I hope that the self-proclaimed novice who felt slighted by Timo's messages (and I apologize for not citing by name or quoting, I'm a bit of a novice too and have lost track of his message!) will gradually find his way around, read the Frequently Asked Questions file, download the Startup Kit which is posted several times a month, not feel afraid to ask if his first set of UU-Encoded files yield rubbish what he did wrong, and perhaps keep track of his steps and missteps and in a few months help those who follow him by perhaps writing a True Beginners' Info Posting or something along that line to help those just arriving over the first step or two. I sort of regret not keeping track of my first puzzlements for just that purpose.... Michael Flory (mjf@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu)
cho@sol4.cs.psu.edu (Sehyeong Cho) (04/16/91)
Uh,.. As THE novice (one of the two) who supposedly got "obnoxious" response, I wasn't offended at all. Far from it. I was just informed. Thanks for concern. And thanks to Timo for info. -- | Yesterday I was a student. Sehyeong Cho | Today I am a student. cho@cs.psu.edu | Tomorrow I'll probably still be a student. | Sigh.. There's so little hope for advancement.
ekman@wdl30.wdl.loral.com (Donald Ekman) (04/16/91)
In article <1991Apr15.205114.12145@cs.ubc.ca> yogi@cs.ubc.ca (Joseph Gil) writes: > > >We should all recognize that Timo's responses are always: > > 1) Polite and very careful in using non-offending words. > 2) Very well formulated. > 3) Always informative. > <more good stuff deleted> I heartily agree. My thanks to Timo, Keith, Bill, and all those who give their time. Don -- Donald E. Ekman | Disclaimer: Loral | How oft the sight of means Space Systems/Loral | doesn't think I have | to do ill deeds Palo Alto, CA USA | any opinions. They | Makes ill deeds done! ekman@wdl1.wdl.loral.com | are probably right. |
daj@reef.cis.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) (04/16/91)
In article <1991Apr15.074642.3009@uwasa.fi> ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi) writes:
# I take the liberty of inferring that you especially object to my
# method of answering questions with pointers to where the answers are
# rather than giving the direct answers. There are reasons for this
# method. It is more generic. It means that the same answers
# probably do not have to be repeated so often. Whether this method
# takes more or less text than giving the actual, full answer is not
# the real issue. This is only my opinion, and many users may
# disagree, but I think that it is more productive in the long run to
# help people to know how to easily find answers to their questions
# rather than simply feed all the answers.
Also, for every person who gets one of these generic reminders after
having posted a question, there are undoubtedly ten more who see your
posting *before* having asked their first question.
Thus, by posting the pointer, you may well be preventing ten more
unnecessary individual questions. henry@ADS.COM (Henry Mensch) (04/16/91)
->> From: davidjl@eecs.ee.pdx.edu (David J Leitko) ->> Subject: RE: Distribution of BGI files... ->> ->> I've gotten used to your rude, obnoxious responses to novice questions in ->> comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d, etc. As matter of fact, I am surprised when I don't ->> see you respond to a novice question with some condescending remark. i don't see this at all in prof. salmi's postings ... i suggest you stop reading things into the articles that aren't there ... -- # Henry Mensch / Advanced Decision Systems / <henry@ads.com>
elliss@kira.egr.msu.edu (Stew Ellis) (04/16/91)
My feelings about this thread put me in mind of an old folk-saying:
Give a person some fish and you will feed that person that night,
teach the person to fish and feed him/her for life.
As a teacher I constantly run into students who do not want to learn the
more general method of how to solve a problem but just want the
quick-and-dirty way to solve the specific problem they are plagued by at
the moment. I applaud Professor Salmi for his efforts to impose problem
solving discipline on the questions. A couple of times his archive has also
been the only place I could find a recent version of some program/source-code.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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R.Stewart (Stew) Ellis / _______________________________/
Assoc. Prof. of Social Science / / ______ ____________ __
Dept. of Humanities & Social Science / / /___ / / ___ ___ / / /
1700 W. Third Avenue / / / / / / / / / / / /
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elliss@frith.egr.msu.edu ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE
"Apple Macintosh, the closed system for people with supposedly open minds."
- plagiarized from someone else on the net
"How you gonna do it? OS/2 it!" - stupid IBM ad
"Have you ever heard anything so half-OSsed?" - meperry@beach.gal.utexas.edu (John Perry KG5RG) (04/16/91)
When I was first introduced to the world of newsgroups, Usenet, FTP
etc.., I had a lot of questions that needed to be answered. Quite a few of
these questions were posted to this and other newsgroups. For the most part,
the responses ranged from nothing at all to getting RTFM'ed to death. The one
person that I felt took the time to help me out, answer my questions, make me
feel at home, etc. was Prof. Salmi. He has obviously spent a lot of time
formulating his answers and working to be well-informed in a non-verbose
fashion. I would think that any attacks against an individual in this group
should be moved to alt.flames where it belongs anyway.
To paraphrase:
"If you are perfect, then you can throw the first stone..."
John Perry KG5RG
University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston, Texas 77550-2772
You can send mail to me at any of the following addresses:
DECnet : BEACH::PERRY
THEnet : BEACH::PERRY
Internet : perry@beach.gal.utexas.edu
Internet : john.perry@f365.n106.z1.fidonet.org
BITNET : PERRY@UTMBEACH
SPAN : UTSPAN::UTADNX::BEACH::PERRY
FIDOnet : 1:106/365.0feg@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (forrest.e.gehrke) (04/17/91)
In article <%~5&T~^@ads.com> henry@ADS.COM (Henry Mensch) writes: >->> From: davidjl@eecs.ee.pdx.edu (David J Leitko) >->> Subject: RE: Distribution of BGI files... >->> >->> I've gotten used to your rude, obnoxious responses to novice questions in >->> comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d, etc. As matter of fact, I am surprised when I don't >->> see you respond to a novice question with some condescending remark. > > >I don't see this at all in Prof. Salmi's postings ... I suggest you >stop reading things into the articles that aren't there ... > >-- ># Henry Mensch / Advanced Decision Systems / <henry@ads.com> Nor do I. Timo is the epitome of diplomacy compared to many of the postings seen on this group. When you consider that English is not Timo's native language he uses it more elegantly than many whose native tongue is English. Although the message which started all this was a personal one directed to Timo, it also shows the impersonality of email. The writer probably would never have used such ill-tempered and insulting language in a voice telephone conversation. He also ought to hit "N" if it bothers him so much rather than directing such a tirade at Timo. Forrest Gehrke feg@dodger.att.com
jameson@jade.uucp (Kevin Jameson) (04/17/91)
Timo Salmi and other moderators clearly benefit the network environment. IMHO, we should leave these people alone and not bite the hand that feeds us.
pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) (04/18/91)
In article <1991Apr15.074642.3009@uwasa.fi> ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi) writes:
=> From: davidjl@eecs.ee.pdx.edu (David J Leitko)
=> Subject: RE: Distribution of BGI files...
=> To: ts@uwasa.fi
=> Date: Sun, 14 Apr 91 14:41:06 PDT
=>
=
=I'll answer these accusations also publicly since according to your
=message I keep insulting users of comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d (etc) with
=rude, obnoxious messages. Be this as may, all feedback is naturally
=very welcome, also critical, and I appreciate the effort you have
=put into writing your feedback. I am also pleased to hear that you
=yet consider some of my work to have been known to be useful.
He sends you email and you publish it? C'mon, Timo -- get a thicker
skin. You know that what you do is worthwhile; you don't need us to
rush to your defense when someone says something about you that you
don't like!!
(Yes, I know I should have emailed this, but sauce for the goose... :-)
Pete
--
Prof. Peter J. Holsberg Mercer County Community College
Voice: 609-586-4800 Engineering Technology, Computers and Math
UUCP:...!princeton!mccc!pjh 1200 Old Trenton Road, Trenton, NJ 08690
Internet: pjh@mccc.edu Trenton Computer Festival -- 4/20-21/91IO92203@MAINE.BITNET (Scott Maxell) (04/18/91)
ENOUGH ALREADY!!! We all have our feelings on the matter, but let it go. T.S. seems to think enuff has been said......... so do I. //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ +---------+ Scott Maxell -- Bitnet ->> IO92203 @ maine | | -- Internet ->> IO92203 @ maine.maine.edu | O | | | | "What I need is a computer that will do what I want it to +---------+ do, not what I tell it to do..."
wilson@issun3.stc.nl (Tony Wilson) (04/18/91)
In <1991Apr17.134446.2179@cbfsb.att.com> feg@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (forrest.e.gehrke) writes: >Nor do I. Timo is the epitome of diplomacy compared to many >of the postings seen on this group. When you consider that >English is not Timo's native language he uses it more elegantly >than many whose native tongue is English. Unlike most Brits (like me) and presumably Americans, Timo was probably taught how to speak/write English properly. PS: Keep up the good work Timo, Keith, et al. -- Tony Wilson (News Administrator) wilson@issun3.stc.nl, or SHAPE Technical Centre, The Hague, NL ...!hp4nl!shapetc!wilson