Re: Got a question regarding newbies

I'm sure your initiative is laudable.
However,...
1 As many newbies are too lazy to search the deja archives, they probably also won't search such a knowledge base (which is of course already available on technet.oracle.com and support.oracle.com and not to forget the website of Thomas Kyte)
2 Inevitably such a knowledge base is going to be structured by means of keywords. Here's another problem: most newbies don't even know which keyword to use (or they would have searched deja.com), so they won't find the answer in a knowledge base, because they search in the wrong direction 3 Most likely many people using newsgroup resource don't have a support contract with Oracle.
Here two remarks need to be made:
- if they would have made a support contract they would just have bugged Oracle with questions
- Oracle would have recommended them to follow a course Many of the questions are so basic (and still people become DBA without ANY previous exposition, education, or experience), answering them simply would repeat a complete manual.

The only reason to start with such an initiative is to relief the burden of people how answer lots and lots of questions. Personally, I'm answering less and less, if the post contains no version and platform information I either don't answer at all and I definitely are not going to spell out version and platform differences.

So my personal recommendation for you would be start to harvest www.deja.com. A question like can I e-mail from Oracle is definitely answered several times per week and I am sure that applies to more questions.
I might (repeat might) be capable of discriminating typical newbie questions from non newbie questions
(anyway I have 10 years experience in this field), but I don't want this to become an additional burden. If the flood of FAQs doesn't at least start to do dry up as a result of your knowledgebase, I will not put any extra effort in it, and I will probably limit my ng activities to an absolute minimum.

Regards,

Sybrand Bakker, Oracle DBA

Andrew Sheh <ashea_at_dmetechnologies.com> wrote in message news:38D12329.219071BB_at_dmetechnologies.com...
> Probably <OT> and don't have qualifications to comment in this thread--
> since I am a newbie.
>
> However, I just wanted to note that I appreciate your help. I don't post
> much, because I do make a point of finding the answer first elsewhere,
> including the new post in the newsgroup.
>
> Questions do get repetitive and understand that you might not have the
 time
> to answer them. Of course, every one has an option of not answering, but
> keep in mind that you help some of us.
>
> Finally, I am a contributor to FAQTS.com -- knowledge base for PHP
> questions. It allows people to put questions and answers of simple
> questions about a software (could be Oracle) Then people can respond or
> find answers with their search engine.
>
> Its idea is not to take emails/postings automatically but manually post
> responses to avoid all the repetition of asking/answering the same
 questions
> over and over again.
>
> Since I am starting a Oracle DBA career, I was asked to start a knowledge
> base. However, I had my doubts since Oracle is well supported
> elsewhere/everywhere.
>
> If you guys are interested, we could organize one and when newbie
 questions
> arise, you can send them to the page with all the answers at the FAQTS,
> without having to retype it. I could learn most of it in the process.
>
> Let me know if you are interested. If you reply, send a cc to me
> personally.
>
>
> Andrew Sheh
> ashea_at_dmetechnologies.com
>
> kal121_at_my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > If one does not want to answer newbie questions, one does not *have* to
> > answer newbie questions. By their very nature, newbies do not know
> > enough about the documentation to know where to find the answers, that's
> > why the come to the newsgroups. Apparently the people who have the time
> > to post articles like this one have the time to answer stupid newbie
> > questions. :-) I've always enjoyed helping people - why do some DBA's
> > insist upon having an "attitude" about people who know less than they
> > do? Learning *where* to find the answers is part of our skill set. Be
> > happy that you live in a time and place where you can make lots of money
> > being a DBA, enjoy prestige in your career, etc. You don't need to put
> > others down in the process.
> >
> > In article <38904321.73D4B53F_at_Unforgetable.com>,
> > Kenneth C Stahl <BlueSax_at_Unforgetable.com> wrote:
> > > I've been on this newsgroup for quite some time and have a couple
> > > questions.
> > >
> > > Why is it that every newbie on the oracle newsgroups automatically
 post a
> > > message asking for a way to determine the number of rows in a table
 without
> > > using count()?
> > >
> > > Why is it that every newbie also seems to automatically ask how to
 create a
> > > temp table in Oracle?
> > >
> > > It seems that the newsgroup spends an inordinate amount of time on
 these
> > > two issues and that newbies never read the thousands of messages on
 the
> > > subject before they post their own query.
> > >
> >
> > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> > Before you buy.
>
Received on Thu Mar 16 2000 - 00:00:00 CST