what is Encryption

[Egaladeist]

Hi MsMittens,

especially if it's the same member over and over and over asking simple questions?

Exactly what I tried to convey to him before...that there should be an expectation that the person is willing to help himself as well as being helped...as guardian alpha himself said...the people who help are NOT their parents and can't be expected to act like parents and wipe every little nose that can't be bothered to find a kleenex themselves...sometimes you have to wipe your own nose.

I completely agree.

Eg

[foxyloxley]

I will be the one spending time to answer everyone's questions instead of telling them to RTFM. I don't mind spending the time helping, because I know that not everyone has to learn the same way you or I did. Some people enjoy manuals, some people enjoy live-interactive conversations.

You've only been here as GA for a few days ........ Your tutorial was a really worthwhile read, but here [AO] some of those who ASK the questions, are too lazy to READ the answers.
What will your response to a post be when you have suggested / asked / ordered the poster to read your tut [as an example] to let them sort out their problem, then you find a second thread, asking the same question in a different section of AO ?

posting the link didn't take long, easier than typing out every detail again and again, but even that is not enough for some.

You say you WILL give the time, fine, so do I, when I see a topic in which I have some experience / knowledge, but for how long ?

How many repeats before YOU say RTFM ?

It DOES and WILL happen.

I have always tried to respond to spyware / adware questions, as I had the classic learning curve of my system being so choked with the damn stuff that nothing was happening that I wanted to happen.
But I am beginning to find the impetus harder each time, as the requests never stop.

Even just posting a link to a tut on cleaning your system, with a little note added to explain, and the poster just adds another post saying s/he is STILL having problems, and could anyone help.

So why not just leave the thread alone, rather than gving a one-liner to google? Let the people with more time handle the thread until you have ample time to come and support us?

Because sometimes a one liner is all that is required.

because their question wasn't "What's the best way to learn and reseach, for myself?".

But that's the point; it IS about educating people to learn for themselves.

Checking out your profile gives us VERY little to go on about you, or your areas of expertise.
Yet your tut shows that you have [at the very least] a good working knowledge of your chosen subject. We [AO] can only make assumptions about those who post based on the answers in the profile, and the 'quality' of their posts.
As you only have a couple of posts, we do not yet know quite how to take you.
This will pass as you post more replies, and a pattern begins to emerge [The Specialist, anyone ]
The same goes for those that post the 'basic' questions.

As for "Why do we do it ?"

Because we CAN .............

If you were to work as a network admin ?
Would you allow your people [your support crew as well as the [L]users] to do ANYTHING ?
Or would you have to be there to do it all for them ?

[guardian alpha]

foxy, I'm not sure why, but you put it in the best perspective for me to not just accept, but also swallow it down whole.

I can imagine it getting old all the time, honestly. I think my biggest annoyance was the RTFM/google it! Attitude. Usually those two phrases come off as annoyed, impatient, and elitist.

Like in your example, maybe helping someone out origonally in a tut or other thread, and then linking people who ask about the same problem in the future to what you said earlier; this comes off much nicer, more patient, and all while still retaining a warm-body research method that I know quite a few people enjoy. It's all about the attitude in how you ask or show someone where to look.

[foxyloxley]

this comes off much nicer, more patient, and all while still retaining a warm-body research method that I know quite a few people enjoy.

I just like to think of it as RTFM with knobs on

[c_sniper]

a tost for foxy~ and ~alpha,

people out there must understand this is not a personal or a group site it is of socity,
socity of different people ,from different states and contries. and information is not evenly disstributed every where

think of Affganistan! how could we[AO] expect them to know most of the things, may be hand full of there know but point is that EVERY ONE don't know.
knowledge is light iand light also have speed and takes time ) light takes 8.5 minutes to reach us from sun (lol),......

we [AO] are light source and if light spread what the problem time moves and more and more new bies come and go gaining the knowledge, and we act as platform of knowledge.
don't forget at startup u (who critics to answer strait forward question) even don't know,
think of day when you first work over computer .................... and now when u know how to make computer work .............. all this is experience. if you don't want to share it then don't attempt to stop others from incresing it. this quetion will come out at certain interval when some one which don't know them sign in, but it's you who know them if u wan't to give them there answer give it or it's your choice because if you don't some one will do.
YOU ARE NOT ULTIMATE.

[RoadClosed]

I feel I have to chime in even though it's been discussed: After seeing very generalized questions like: "what is an access point", for the 50th time this month, one tends to get sarcastic. And takes to some off kilter humor. It's easier to post one's own google link then go through all the threads and find another link to a definition of a word in the dictionary on your desk. ESPECIALLY if the first 40 google hits have the answer right there in the description and no work at all is involved. Or type another paragraph detailing the same thing you typed 100 times already.

Google definitely doesn't come up with nearly enough answers. But there is nothing wrong with pointing it out for simplistic questions. A lot of it just depends on the mood (my case saturday morning stuck at work, ironically fixing an issue with SSL certificates). But many times a paragraph or entire paper would be necessary to explain something like how bits work, and in that case it's necessary to point someone to a link. And say, "hey read the link". Nothing wrong with that. Especially if someone took the time to post the link. I thought MsMittens initial post was comical and appropriate. Mine however was purely sarcastic.

Personalized answers do make it a better forum. But they have no point if no one reads them after the thread gets to be a few days old. This was actually a valid question, what is the difference in bits between windows 32 bit operating system and the length of encryption standards as stated in bits also, and how can something be encrypted to 128 bits when the OS only supports 32 bits. The question is flawed in a way, but it does prove some critical thinking ability in the poster. But there is a deep lack of understanding of what a bit is. And to explain that would be difficult, in fact so technical that the reader probably wouldn't read it. So google is best even though it sounds shallow on the surface. Heck he might not even know google exists and in pointing him there, she opened a whole new world. The fun realy resides (oh it's important to point out many of us answer questions for the pure enjoyment of it either in solving a problem or learning from our own research, which means we have to be interested in it). So the fun really takes off when this person comes back from google and asks clarification on what he or she has read.

[zencoder]

Perception of the members answering is a point to consider too. Starting a thread asking something (especially when their Posts = 1) that could have been easily determined with a little bit of personal effort feels and sounds a lot like what we imagine is the attitude of the average script kiddie. Does that prove the poster is a script kiddie? Of course not. But if they appear that way, many of us will react in kind.

I see this whole thread, at this point, as a description of "Welcome to the Internet. Now go the f$ck home." These are the ways that humans interact from behind blind CRT's (or LCD/Plasma panels for those of you lucky enough) over copper and fibre media. Netiquette is important, but it's not a law, and many people choose not to practice it. *Shrug*