Re: What gives?

>From: Jack Parker <jparker@hpbs3645.boi.hp.com> >Date: Mon, 3 Apr 95 16:08:22 MDT >X-Informix-List-Id: <list.5877> > >Pholks, > >First of all allow me to apologize for a minor spam. I borrowed Harvey's >login to ask an RTFM and see what happened. You may recall the question was >something like 'can I run isql forms and reports from the command line'. If >I had asked that question 2 years ago I would have been bombarded with 40-50 >answers. To date there have been 4 answers to Harveys' question, two of which >involve 'sacego/sperform'. Interesting -- you're forgiven as far as I am concerned. >I asked the question to confirm a sneaking suspicion I had that net >answership has declined over the past whatever. Might I ask why? You may... >Have we gotten better in terms of recognizing when a question is so easy >that everybody is going to answer? Possibly. More particularly, I think we may have become familiar with the process of using the newsgroup constructively so that we actually check whether other people have already answered before chipping in our own contribution. Maybe threaded news-readers are becoming more prevalent and are aiding this. >Have we become dulled to the amount of mail that comes across? A distinct possibility. >Have we become scared to answer questions for fear that we might be wrong? I would hope not. If you are confident that you know the answer and you can't see an answer from someone else, then you shouldn't be afraid to contribute. On the whole, this group is very free of incorrect suggested answers. If you don't know the answer and can only suggest 'try XYZ', maybe you shouldn't contribute to the news-group as a whole -- try emailing your suggestion to the asker. This can happen when you think you know the answer but you can't test it because you haven't got a relevant configuration. It can also happen when you can't be bothered to test something. If you do answer confidently, it is as well to be able to demonstrate to yourself, even if not c.d.i, that you are able justify your answer. On numerous occasions I have decided to double-check something before sending off an answer, and promptly had to redo the entire answer. However, life is far from easy, particularly as the range of versions extends from versions 4.00 through 7.1x (plus the odd Informix 3.30 question, the odd 2.10.03 question, and the new products where the version numbering starts at 1.x again). If you have knowledge of any one version, then as long as you document which version you tested with (and which platform), then you won't be faulted for not knowing about other versions. Someone may provide a clarification for other versions. It is also very important that when the question is asked, the version information is supplied -- something which has improved noticeably compared with a year or two ago. >Have we all gone so far into the stratosphere with our topics that simple >everyday questions like this are meaningless? I would hope not. >Have we lost readership due to the number of job postings? Possibly. >Has Informix become such a little-used product that there aren't that >many of us left? I would hope not, but then again, I'm slightly biassed:-) >This is not the way I remember it and I don't like it at all. You have omitted one factor -- the FAQ. Kerry has done a superb job setting it up, and the commonest FAQ is now "Where's the FAQ". Is this doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing -- cutting down on unnecessary traffic? Actually, that applies to the volume of questions, rather than the volume of responses to a question once asked. One other possibility is that more questions are answered by email. I tend to deal with simple RTFM questions by pointed, terse emails to the sender. The ones you get to see in c.d.i from me are when the email bounces. Some of the time that's because our email system is out of commission; other times that is because there's a problem somewhere else -- like the sending news system forgot to provide a decent address so john_doe@somewhere.xyz (outside Informix) appears to be a person from inside Informix by the time I get to see the multiply-mangled message. >I realize that I haven't been answering many questions lately - trying to >restrict myself to ones I know I know and not those where Jonathan is >bound to have a better answer. I'm flattered by the recognition that I have in comp.databases.informix, but the news group needs to be able to survive without me. I'm not planning on going anywhere, but I occasionally get to go on holiday, too. I can't always be the one who answers. Having said that, I suspect that one of the reasons I get to answer more questions than most people do is that I get c.d.i vie email rather than a news-feed. That means that I get the information incrementally, rather than one batch per day which is, perhaps, more typical of a true news-feed. I tend to respond to anything I can answer before eliminating it from my email -- I get so much email that it has to be dealt with promptly -- and about the only economization I do is reading through my email in the morning without answering anything, just to check if there is already an adequate answer already visible. If there is an adequate answer, I don't add anything. If there is something significant missing or wrong, I will usually chip in to correct what I perceive to be the problem. If there is no answer, I supply my version of the answer. I'm always happiest when someone else has supplied the correct answer. Please don't decide not to answer some question simply because if you don't, I might instead. Also, there are a number of subjects on which I don't generally give answers -- I try to make it non-obvious, but there are distinct limits to the amount I know! >Would y'all care to discuss this? Should we move it to IUG-talk? I'm putting in my tuppence worth before it moves to IUG-talk since I only subscribe to the weekly digest, not the ongoing discussion. Having said that, it is a low-volume list, so maybe it wouldn't matter. Yours, Jonathan Leffler (johnl@informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h>