CentOS - Mar 2006 - Forum Decorum: a reminder seems appropriate.

I point to the following *not* as a license for more experienced folks
to become inordinately rude or terse with those who don''t stick closely
to the guidelines presented, but in the hope that some of the newer
folks may have been ignorant of some of these "net common courtesies".

My goal is that we''ll see "better" questions than some of
what we''ve
had.

It starts here

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#asking

and goes through here

Don''t ask people to reply by private e-mail

There is more of interest and there are postings on the web that are
shorter and more focused on the "do your homework and reports pertinent
data", but I''m getting the feeling that a general reminder is in
order.

HTH and no offense targeted at/to anybody.

Bill
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William L. Maltby wrote:
> I point to the following *not* as a license for more experienced folks
> to become inordinately rude or terse with those who don''t stick
closely
> to the guidelines presented, but in the hope that some of the newer
> folks may have been ignorant of some of these "net common
courtesies".
>
> My goal is that we''ll see "better" questions than some
of what we''ve
> had.
>
> It starts here
>
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#asking
>
> and goes through here
>
> Don''t ask people to reply by private e-mail
>
> There is more of interest and there are postings on the web that are
> shorter and more focused on the "do your homework and reports
pertinent
> data", but I''m getting the feeling that a general reminder is
in order.
>
> HTH and no offense targeted at/to anybody.
>
> Bill
>   
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>   
No offence taken but in the same way I don''t think that link really 
follows the spirit of what happens here.

The link you posted implies that you should exhaust all avenues before 
posting to a forum with a question.

That isn''t really in the spirit of this type of forum imho.  Typically 
you get *better* answers on this forum than you do searching the web as 
the people here have first hand experience of using Centos.  This forum 
shouldn''t be seen as the last place you ask, in my opinion it should be
one of the first.  Additionally the link you posted asserts that people 
here won''t want to be a question posters free consultant.  All the 
people on this list that are regulars are on this list to contribute and 
share experience and information for free.

For Centos questions this really should be one of the first places you 
ask for the best quality answers, after some remedial research.  I enjoy 
being a part of this list as people''s questions and the answers and 
ideas exchanged expand your knowledge and lead you to know about what 
others find hard or have had problems with, which is invaluable.

All questions are valid, often people asking the simplest of questions 
are the ones who can benefit the most from information provided here.

Admittedly personal flaming and those who are almost religious in their 
IT beliefs are not welcome on this type of forum, but we''ve all been in
situations where comments ignite a passion to set the world 
straight.....and sometimes those discussions are the most amusing and 
thought provoking....--- dare I mention SELinux and disabling it.....  :-P



P.

PS:  In this world there at 10 types of people: Those who understand 
binary and those who don''t




Peter Farrow wrote:
> William L. Maltby wrote:
>> I point to the following *not* as a license for more experienced folks
>> to become inordinately rude or terse with those who don''t
stick closely
>> to the guidelines presented, but in the hope that some of the newer
>> folks may have been ignorant of some of these "net common
courtesies".
>>
>> My goal is that we''ll see "better" questions than
some of what we''ve
>> had.
>>
>> It starts here
>>
>> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#asking
>>
>> and goes through here
>>
>> Don''t ask people to reply by private e-mail
>>
>> There is more of interest and there are postings on the web that are
>> shorter and more focused on the "do your homework and reports
pertinent
>> data", but I''m getting the feeling that a general
reminder is in order.
>>
>> HTH and no offense targeted at/to anybody.
>>
>> Bill
>>   
>>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> CentOS mailing list
>> CentOS@centos.org
>> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>>   
> No offence taken but in the same way I don''t think that link
really
> follows the spirit of what happens here.
>
> The link you posted implies that you should exhaust all avenues before 
> posting to a forum with a question.
>
> That isn''t really in the spirit of this type of forum imho. 
Typically
> you get *better* answers on this forum than you do searching the web 
> as the people here have first hand experience of using Centos.  This 
> forum shouldn''t be seen as the last place you ask, in my opinion
it
> should be one of the first.  Additionally the link you posted asserts 
> that people here won''t want to be a question posters free
consultant.
> All the people on this list that are regulars are on this list to 
> contribute and share experience and information for free.
>
> For Centos questions this really should be one of the first places you 
> ask for the best quality answers, after some remedial research.  I 
> enjoy being a part of this list as people''s questions and the
answers
> and ideas exchanged expand your knowledge and lead you to know about 
> what others find hard or have had problems with, which is invaluable.
>
> All questions are valid, often people asking the simplest of questions 
> are the ones who can benefit the most from information provided here.
>
> Admittedly personal flaming and those who are almost religious in 
> their IT beliefs are not welcome on this type of forum, but we''ve
all
> been in situations where comments ignite a passion to set the world 
> straight.....and sometimes those discussions are the most amusing and 
> thought provoking....--- dare I mention SELinux and disabling it.....  
> :-P
>
>
>
> P.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 21:17 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> William L. Maltby wrote:
> > I point to the following *not* as a license for more experienced folks
> > to become inordinately rude or terse with those who don''t
stick closely
> > to the guidelines presented, but in the hope that some of the newer
> > folks may have been ignorant of some of these "net common
courtesies".
> >
> > My goal is that we''ll see "better" questions than
some of what we''ve
> > had.
> >
> > It starts here
> >
> > http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#asking
> >
> > and goes through here
> >
> > Don''t ask people to reply by private e-mail
> >
> > There is more of interest and there are postings on the web that are
> > shorter and more focused on the "do your homework and reports
pertinent
> > data", but I''m getting the feeling that a general
reminder is in order.
> >
> > HTH and no offense targeted at/to anybody.
> >
> > Bill
> ><snip list sig stuff>
>  
> No offence taken but in the same way I don''t think that link
really
> follows the spirit of what happens here.
> 
> The link you posted implies that you should exhaust all avenues before 
> posting to a forum with a question.
Yes. There is one referenced by LFS that is more reasonable. I don''t
really care if they exhaust all avenues or not. I do care when the reply
to the question is *appropriately* "use the help on your desktop..."
and
"right click on properties...".

IMO that sort of question descends from "making reasonable use of freely
donated time and effort" to "abusing generosity because of
laziness". We
see so many where no one has even checked the archives of this forum,
much less done any of the things mentioned in that article.

The other major failing that is seen commonly is "... doesn''t do
..."
and they give no background detail. No someone posts with things like
"what mainboard, ethernet, HDs, kenel..." etc. How many times have we
seen that?

I believe it is reasonable for those seeking assistance to expend some
energy to minimize (or at least reduce) the time and effort to be
expended by the folks who may try to help them.

My hope is only that people will tend to *not* habitually squander
generously donated time and effort because it costs them nothing to
squander it. And I have seen posts by others that indicate they also
recognize this trend occasionally.

On the technical/cost side, we need not discuss bandwidth, resource
consumption, etc. The fine folks who maintain/provide that may have some
feelings on that part of it.
> 
> That isn''t really in the spirit of this type of forum imho. 
Typically
> you get *better* answers on this forum than you do searching the web as 
> the people here have first hand experience of using Centos.  This forum 
> shouldn''t be seen as the last place you ask, in my opinion it
should be
> one of the first.  Additionally the link you posted asserts that people 
> here won''t want to be a question posters free consultant.  All the
> people on this list that are regulars are on this list to contribute and 
> share experience and information for free.
> 
> For Centos questions this really should be one of the first places you 
> ask for the best quality answers, after some remedial research.  I enjoy 
> being a part of this list as people''s questions and the answers
and
> ideas exchanged expand your knowledge and lead you to know about what 
> others find hard or have had problems with, which is invaluable.
> 
> All questions are valid, often people asking the simplest of questions 
> are the ones who can benefit the most from information provided here.
> 
> Admittedly personal flaming and those who are almost religious in their 
> IT beliefs are not welcome on this type of forum, but we''ve all
been in
> situations where comments ignite a passion to set the world 
> straight.....and sometimes those discussions are the most amusing and 
> thought provoking....--- dare I mention SELinux and disabling it.....  :-P
Your POV is respected and may be correct. Personally, I love to help
those who demonstrate initiative and consideration by not posing
questions that demonstrate that very little research was done. I usually
don''t offer answers to the others because I choose not to descend into
the "first return from google..." camp of replies (nothing wrong with
that, I''m just to lazy to post it a thousand times  :-)

As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, "... in the hope that some of
the newer folks may have been ignorant of some of these "net common
courtesies"...". I had no intent of asking all to do all mentioned,
but
I did hope to instill a sense of obligation to be mindful of wasting
time and effort, due to "laziness".
> <snip sigs>
Bill
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Isn''t there some kind of FAQ in place?

__________________________________________________
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On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 15:59 -0500, William L. Maltby
wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 21:17 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> > William L. Maltby wrote:
while I agree...it''s not up to you, I, Peter or whomever to be list
moms...that''s for the list managers if they so choose. It comes off as
rather sanctimonious.

As for Peter...I still think that anyone who suggests that people turn
off SELinux is a moron. (let''s not have this debate again)

;-)

Craig

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 14:06 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 15:59 -0500, William L. Maltby wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 21:17 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> > > William L. Maltby wrote:
> 
> while I agree...it''s not up to you, I, Peter or whomever to be
list
> moms...that''s for the list managers if they so choose. It comes
off as
> rather sanctimonious.
Sorry ''bout that! Is that to say that I should not have posted a
suggestion I thought useful and/or appropriate? Are you now being my
"mom"? I suspect that is not your intent.

I don''t believe I posted anything that implied that I could/would
police
the activities of others. I posted a ref that I hoped would help folks
get some sense of some things that helped them and others when help was
needed.

If that is somehow "out of bounds" or seen as discourteous, I guess
I''m
more ignorant than I believed I was.
> <snip>
Bill
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Craig White wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 15:59 -0500, William L. Maltby wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 21:17 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
>>     
>>> William L. Maltby wrote:
>>>       
>
> while I agree...it''s not up to you, I, Peter or whomever to be
list
> moms...that''s for the list managers if they so choose. It comes
off as
> rather sanctimonious.
>
> As for Peter...I still think that anyone who suggests that people turn
> off SELinux is a moron. (let''s not have this debate again)
>
> ;-)
>
> Craig
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
>   
Snip

As for Peter...I still think that anyone who suggests that people turn
off SELinux is a moron. (let''s not have this debate again)

Snip

Have you heard the music on your website recently........

:-P

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 16:15 -0500, William L. Maltby wrote:
> 
> If that is somehow "out of bounds" or seen as discourteous, I
guess I''m
> more ignorant than I believed I was.
----
much ado about nothing - please don''t manufacture a whole thread about
nothing. Don''t make it personal.

Craig

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 22:29 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> Snip
> 
> Have you heard the music on your website recently........
----
no - and I forgot the login to my webhost years ago and haven''t been
able to change a thing on the website - not to mention that I don''t
think I''ve had a midi player on my linux system for quite some time...

Working? Not working?

Craig

Craig White wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 22:29 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
>
>   
>> Snip
>>
>> Have you heard the music on your website recently........
>>     
> ----
> no - and I forgot the login to my webhost years ago and haven''t
been
> able to change a thing on the website - not to mention that I
don''t
> think I''ve had a midi player on my linux system for quite some
time...
>
> Working? Not working?
>
> Craig
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
>   
unfortunately its working....

:-)

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 22:42 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 22:29 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> Snip
> >>
> >> Have you heard the music on your website recently........
> >>     
> > ----
> > no - and I forgot the login to my webhost years ago and
haven''t been
> > able to change a thing on the website - not to mention that I
don''t
> > think I''ve had a midi player on my linux system for quite
some time...
> >
> > Working? Not working?
> >
> >   
> unfortunately its working....
> 
> :-)
----
depends if you are a Genesis fan...if you are, they are interesting
though there are one or two songs that can sound cheesy on some poorly
instrumented midi systems, I recall them all to be superbly arranged and
very lightweight considering that they are midi - and let me assure you,
they take a lot of time to create. The piano work on Fifth of Firth was
absolutely superb.

In fact - a funny story about those particular midi files. One day, I
picked up a real cheap midi keyboard. I got a cheap midi interface and
downloaded a few midi songs from the internet (still using dial-up) and
dumped one to the keyboard. It sounded like crap. Figured out that my
cheapo midi keyboard didn''t support general midi so I had to manually
assign the instruments to the tracks.

Downloaded one of these songs and my keyboard went into "OVERLOAD" - I
cracked up. Decided to actually buy a decent keyboard. Went to expensive
store in town, they had me looking at Yamaha keyboards. Went to cheap
store in town, they directed me to same Yamaha keyboard, $100 less. I
asked if I could bring in a midi file and dump it to keyboard to see how
it sounded - they said sure.

I brought back 2 floppy discs...same midi songs, 1 on Macintosh format,
1 on Windows format floppy (I didn''t know - they didn''t know
either).
Hooked up midi floppy disk drive, they didn''t know how to make it work.
That was up my alley, so I got it to read the disk (Windows) and dumped
the first song to the keyboard...sounded good. Dumped the Fifth of Firth
song (same one on my Internet page) on the keyboard...after about 2
minutes, there was a crowd around the keyboard...Dumped the final song,
the acid test...Cinema Show (I believe the midi is one of the random
songs played on my web site) and the song started to play - now everyone
in the entire store is over at the keyboard wondering who is playing
this...Needless to say, I bought the keyboard and the store salesman
asked if he could keep the disk.

The Cinema Show midi was a collaboration of like 6 different artists and
took months to do - it''s like a 15 minute song. From my keyboard,
it''s
awesome...I take out the guitar track, plug in my guitar and I am a rock
band  ;-)  I was even able to generate the sheet music from the midi
file...technology can be an incredible thing.

I''m glad it''s still working - sorry it isn''t your cup
of tea.

Craig

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 13:04 -0800, Mike Stankovic wrote:
> Isn''t there some kind of FAQ in place?
> 
WRT how we think people should use the mailing list ... here it is:

http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=16

And a synopsis:

1. Please turn off HTML in your e-mail client for these mailing lists.
We have several subscribers who read the list with text only readers and
they can''t easily read html formatted e-mails. There is a place
(somewhere) for the flowery stationary and themes that some mail clients
offer ... but this is not it. Again, please only post text e-mails to
these mailing lists.

2. Please do not top post to the mailing list when replying to a post.
(See the Quoting Style link above, and use the Interleaved text method,
deleting non-applicable text as required. If you need to reply to a
message, and you do not need to post in interleaved mode, please bottom
post instead of top posting.

Note: There are places to debate the merits of top posting and how it
might have some advantages in relation to Interleaved text or bottom
posting ... but this is not one of those places.

---------------
Please also visit the link above and read the 4 posted links 
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On 3/29/06, Johnny Hughes <mailing-lists@hughesjr.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 13:04 -0800, Mike Stankovic wrote:
> > Isn''t there some kind of FAQ in place?
> >
>
> WRT how we think people should use the mailing list ... here it is:
>
> http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=16
>
> And a synopsis:
>
> 1. Please turn off HTML in your e-mail client for these mailing lists.
My other Linux list rejects html mail with a polite message.
> 2. Please do not top post to the mailing list when replying to a post.
Excellent, Johnny, and you have a link to the standard netiquette in your link.

Summary of above suggestions:

3. Do a little basic research before posting and include the actual
errors you see rather than the lame "it''s broke".

And my favorite gripe

4. Please trim your posts. When you reply, we don''t need to see all
the wrapper crap from every mail in the thread.

And a suggestion.

At least one user suggested researching previous posts on this list.
It might be a good idea (TM) to post a link somewhere visible
instructing unfamiliar users how to find the archives.

And a final note for Peter and Craig

This post hand crafted by Morons ''R US: I disable selinux on all my
systems.

--
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 18:50 -0700, Collins Richey wrote:
> And a final note for Peter and Craig
> 
> This post hand crafted by Morons ''R US: I disable selinux on all
my systems.
----
I think Peter very much agrees with you. I also think that you should do
with your systems as you see best and would never presume upon you.
Disabling SELinux doesn''t make you a moron.

I think other people who have problems caused by SELinux might be better
served by some help with their problems other than to be told to just
shut it off - that is my only point. 

SELinux has not been a problem for me on CentOS 4, RHEL 4 or FC-3 or
FC-4. There have been some changes with respect to SELinux in FC-5
including new tools and new policies and I haven''t grappled with them
yet but so far, SELinux hasn''t created any obstacles that
weren''t
relatively easy to solve, and yes, there were times I needed some help.

This mail list, has been light on help both in terms of requests and in
terms of solutions on SELinux which suggests to me that a great many are
turning it off and I would suspect that you are in the majority of
CentOS 4 users that simply turn it off rather than learn how to live
with it.

Craig

On 30/03/06, Craig White <craigwhite@azapple.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 18:50 -0700, Collins Richey wrote:
>
> > And a final note for Peter and Craig
> >
> > This post hand crafted by Morons ''R US: I disable selinux on
all my systems.
> ----
> I think Peter very much agrees with you. I also think that you should do
> with your systems as you see best and would never presume upon you.
> Disabling SELinux doesn''t make you a moron.
[SNIP]
We are digressing from topic.....The pointers state start a new thread ;-)

IMHO Good list etiquette is always welcome and generally people with
clear posts and follow ups get there problem solutions faster. That is
incentive enough to follow clear posting policy.

--
Sudev Barar
Learning Linux