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RE: Newbies welcome, or not?

From: Mercadante, Thomas F <thomas.mercadante_at_labor.state.ny.us>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 14:31:30 -0400
Message-ID: <DE8A21F8F1D0254EA4A9214D52AB2FEDAD5C83@exchsen0a1ma>


Jared,

I agree with you. This list is for everybody - either new or experienced. Everyone must be patient with the beginner questions. I, like Jared, sometimes will not answer simple questions - either because I don't have time, or feel like someone else can and should answer it. I probably delete about 90% of all of the questions posted here, lurking and reading those that I have an interest in. And I post questions when I get stuck - (even us who have been with Oracle for a "few years" have questions!!)

So I say, leave the list alone. Even though I will miss Mladen's wit (and I think he is wicked funny) and his expertise in sharing what he knows, all of us have to move on at one point or the other. Joe Testa will be missed also. I say good luck to both of them and will welcome them back if/when they decide to come back.

Just my 2 cents.

Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional

-----Original Message-----
From: Jared.Still_at_radisys.com [mailto:Jared.Still_at_radisys.com] Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 2:21 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Newbies welcome, or not?

>
> ANYBODY who would type ANYTHING in as root WITHOUT knowing what it
> does EXACTALLY should not have root access, is not responsable
> enough to have root access and needs to WAKE UP and LEARN the "man"
command.
>
> good lord, people, what happened to personal responsibility and
> professionalism?
>

It would seem that many of us have forgotten that Scott Adams gets fodder for Dilbert from real life.

As Mark Powell has pointed out, folks get thrown into the position of DBA and/or Unix admin without much prior experience, and they don't have much say in the matter, short of finding new employment. That is not always an option. They may not yet have a good concept of how unix works, and don't yet appreciate the power of root.

So, are we saying we should not answer newbie questions for folks that don't have a clue, and yet they are required to fill the position?

Even pointing someone to the correct section of the documentation can be extremely useful. I started with Oracle 7.0.12. The documentation was quite a bit smaller than now, but it wasn't always clear which doc I needed.

The docs are now 20k+ pages for all the Oracle online docs. The index and search capabilities are useful, but hardly infallible. Is it too much trouble for us to point someone in the right direction?

How about the less experienced listers? I often ignore simple questions, knowing that this gives an opportunity for junior folks to participate in the list, and help out those that have even less experience than they do.

So, what's the consensus?

Should be welcome folks with little experience, or make it clear that they should come back when they know what they're doing?

My vote is for trying to be helpful, even to those with annoyingly simple questions. If I don't care to answer, I leave it for someone else.

Jared



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Received on Mon Jun 28 2004 - 13:28:30 CDT

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