Questions without answers

[Michael Greim]

In article <50 at uisc1.UUCP>, root at uisc1.UUCP (Super user) writes:
> ...
> The trend is to ask a question, and then to finish it by saying "Please
> reply to E-mail/private mail as I am too busy to keep up with this
> conference/newsgroup."
> 
> What's the result? Well, the result is a newsgroup in which you have lots
> and lots of questions, and no answers. The result is also that people
> stop reading the newsgroup, as nobody is really terribly interested in
> the questions. It's the answers and the advice people are reading it for.
I agree.
> 
> I find that often I have the answers to questions I read, but when I
> see the above request for private replies, I don't bother to reply to
> the question, private or public. Public because the person who asked the
> question already said he wouldn't be reading it, and private because I
> don't want to encourge such rather selfish attitudes.
Well, sometimes the answers to questions are so obvious that I rather
e-mail them, so that the person who asked the question will not be
embarrased too much. (Just yesterday I did the opposite and answered such
a question in public. :-)

The person who asked the question can do something : he can summarize
the replies he got and post them to the net. I've seen this done several
times, but I can also remember some cases where this was not done.
(Some months ago I put a question to the net myself and did not summarize
the replies. I thought nobody would be interested as it was a question
on copyright of a certain piece of software, viz. CURSES. Maybe I should
repent ??? :-)
If the question was something like "what do you do to ..." or
"How can you ..." I'd certainly make a summary.

	Michael

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