Have a question on an Open Source language that you can't find an answer to? In another walk of life, want to know about a travel and transport topic? Please feel free to ask and I'm only too happy to come back with comments, suggestions, pointers. I enjoy doing so - please do use me.
However, there are just a few occasions where I feel that use has lead on to
ABuse.
A couple of hours back, I got a request for some help on Tcl; fine, happy to help - except that the same request arrived in two different ways ... to two different addresses that I don't think that my writer would have been able to associate. I felt - let's find wording - spammed with the question. And it lead me to wonder
"If I've been asked twice, I wonder how many other people have been asked". No indication in the message that he was asking all around - it was worded as if it was individually done. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I've written back and asked my correspondent how many people he's asked the question of, and suggested that lets me know again, and more personally, in a few days if he doesn't get an answer to his questions from any of them ...
it's just not an effective use of my time to be answering questions that someone else has also answered and are no longer of interest.
I also start to get concerned when I'm being asked for so much (free) advise that the requester would be far better off to spend a few days attending a course - especially as we actually run courses and that's how we make our living. The British "reserve" is great, but just occasionally I feel like saying to someone "hey - play fair - I've got to earn a living too" ...
For the remaining 99% of you, happy and delighted to answer those odd little questions that crop up from time to time, or give you a few thoughts on how "this" or "that" should be done. And if that's
after one of our courses I'm double delighted and well into the spirit.
(written 2005-03-16, updated 2006-06-05)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G903 - Well House Consultants - Running and moderating forums and social media sites [22] Falling out over the silliest things - (2004-08-21)
[29] Silence is Golden - (2004-08-26)
[115] Expiration dates or times on web pages - (2004-11-12)
[130] Spelling and grammar - (2004-11-25)
[204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
[231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
[424] How not to run a forum - (2005-08-24)
[516] Open source questions? Anyone can ask. - (2005-12-03)
[651] Please Register with Opentalk - but just once! - (2006-03-19)
[806] Check your user is human. Have him retype a word in a graphic - (2006-07-17)
[828] Freedom of speech and freedom to post - (2006-08-10)
[841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
[919] Freedom for X is denial of privacy for Y - (2006-11-09)
[923] Why shouldn't I spam? - (2006-11-13)
[948] Running an on line campaign - (2006-11-27)
[1088] Why use BBC code not HTML? - (2007-02-21)
[1190] Save the Forum - A regular clean sweep - (2007-05-17)
[1362] No Thank You - (2007-09-23)
[1472] The Horse goes on and on - (2007-12-15)
[1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
[1523] Ive just received an email from myself. Should I be worried? - (2008-01-29)
[1532] Comment spam blocked. Please comment via Forums - (2008-02-05)
[1539] A forum is not always the best vehicle - (2008-02-14)
[1563] Guidlines for posting on a forum - (2008-03-04)
[1569] I dont care - goodbye - (2008-03-09)
[1578] Please don't shout at me! - (2008-03-16)
[1595] First Great Western Weekend - (2008-03-30)
[1678] Software - changes and delays. But courses must run on time! - (2008-06-15)
[1759] While the world sleeps ... - (2008-08-19)
[1923] Making it all worthwhile - (2008-12-04)
[1972] Pettifog and forum boards away from public view - (2009-01-03)
[2103] Ask the Tutor - Open Source forum - (2009-03-25)
[2116] Why do we delay new forum members through authorisation? - (2009-04-03)
[2156] Stopping forum spam - control of the signup process - (2009-05-04)
[2162] Admins thoughts on banning a member from a forum - (2009-05-09)
[2177] Preventing forum spam - checks at sign up - (2009-05-12)
[2254] Forum membership - a privilege not a right - (2009-06-22)
[2386] Computing under the influence of alcohol - (2009-08-29)
[2526] A reluctance to move from old shoes to new - (2009-12-05)
[2527] Flying tonight - (2009-12-05)
[2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
[2781] The 500 pound question to get you started - (2010-05-26)
[2820] Netiquette for forum newcomers - (2010-06-20)
[3479] Practical Extraction and Reporting - using Python and Extreme Programming - (2011-10-14)
[3910] Identifying your real customers and keeping them well informed fast - (2012-11-02)
[4017] Acceptable User Policy / vexatious interacter - (2013-02-24)
[4025] Backups, Codebase, Strategy and more - dealing with forum incidents - (2013-03-03)
[4065] Handling requests to a forum - the background process - (2013-04-17)
[4234] Change to Libel and Defamation laws from 1st January 2014 - (2013-12-31)
[4239] Facebook marketing - early experiences - (2014-01-19)
[4283] Can a legitimate forum post become illegal a year later? - (2014-07-11)
[4307] Identifying and clearing denial of service attacks on your Apache server - (2014-09-27)
[4315] Welcoming genuine forum posters quickly - but turning away off topic advertisers - (2014-11-16)
[4403] The unbalanced relationship between customer and provider - (2015-01-21)
[4492] Almost so wrong, but perhaps it's right for some? - (2015-05-11)
G305 - Well House Consultants - Post Course support [136] Please tell us - (2004-12-01)
[199] Post course support - part of the service - (2005-02-02)
[244] Getting your examples, my examples and the data files after your course - (2005-03-13)
[293] Course follow-ups - (2005-04-27)
[327] How far should our support go - (2005-05-28)
[336] Targetted Advertising - (2005-06-05)
[389] Tough Love - (2005-07-25)
[509] Snippets from Geekmas - (2005-11-28)
[569] Instructions for bright people - (2006-01-19)
[609] Been on a course, but still not got it? - (2006-02-16)
[1245] Ensuring that our tutor answers YOUR questions - (2007-06-25)
[1874] Is it worth it? - (2008-11-07)
[2102] What do people think of our Apache httpd / Tomcat course? - (2009-03-24)
[2732] Asking about Jesus - (2010-04-20)
[3045] After Course Resources - do we publish sample answers. Example from Java Exceptions module. - (2010-11-13)
[3391] For programmers who use Internet Explorer as their browser - (2011-08-13)
[3419] Data that we use during our training courses, and other training resources - (2011-09-04)
[3701] Refresh and Revision training class days - Perl / PHP / Python / Lua / Ruby / Tcl / C / C++ - (2012-04-19)
[3770] Sample answers to training course exercises - available on our web site - (2012-06-21)
[4588] What teach you in a week stays with you for a decade - (2015-11-29)
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