Re: Posting answers vs mailing them (Was: SQLPLUS question)

From: Jim Hall <hall_at_stimpy.mfa.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 14:23:35 -0600
Message-ID: <Pine.HPP.3.91.950320141020.18767J-100000_at_stimpy.mfa.com>


On 19 Mar 1995, Susan Jung wrote:

> I'm fairly new to usenet, but I feel that all answers should be posted
> rather than emailed to the questioner. The beauty of a bulletin board
> is to see all the questions and the answers. I don't care if some
> of the answers don't turn out to be right; at least I can get a few
> ideas. Many times I see a question that I am interested in with no
> replies. Now I wonder, did the replies just go to the questioner and
> I remain in the dark? I enjoy usenet and hope to learn as more
> answers are posted.

It seems to me that the onus is on the questioner to summarize the e-mail answers received and post them back to the newsgroup (it is considered bad form to refer to a usenet group as a bulletin board). This allows for people who think they know the answer to provide it directly to the questioner, without having to read and wonder "did somebody already answer this". It gives the questioner a chance to check out and evaluate the responses and their aptness to the particular situation. The responsible questioner (and there are many in this group) will then summarize the answers received, explain which solution(s) or hybrid solution worked and maybe even raise a further question about how or why one particular answer did or didn't work. In addition, it saves the rest of the group from reading 2 dozen postings saying "put a semicolon at the end...".

A recent example was a posting here where the questioner had used MM instead of MI in a date format. I coincidently read the post minutes after he posted it, and e-mailed him with the answer. He replied and posted that the MI instead of the MM fixed the problem. Then for the next week, we all got to read postings to the group with the correct (and a couple of incorrect) answers. E-mail solved the problem quickly, he posted a summary of the answer(s) in a timely fashion (about 2 hours after the original post) and we could have been done - with everybody effectively and correctly informed. However, a number of folks read the original posting, posted the answer to this group, and then a couple of posts later, saw his summary of the answer, and probably felt foolish for wasting the bandwidth to repeat the answer to the entire group. If those well intentioned follow-ups had been e-mailed, those folks would have been spared a public faux paus, the rest of the readers of the group would have been spared many repeated postings of the same answer, and the only person who would have had to deal with all of the answers is the person who asked the question in the first place (a fair price for the free advise).

Bottom line (IMHO) is e-mail the answers, let the questioner summarize. If too much time goes by and you don't see an answer to a question that you wondered about - post the question again - what you'll probably get is a bunch of e-mail pointing out an obvious answer - so obvious that the original poster didn't feel it warranted a public airing.

Sorry for being so long winded.
- jim



"So my mind wanders, at least it gets out." - Red Green Received on Mon Mar 20 1995 - 21:23:35 CET

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