Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: vernard@cc.gatech.edu (Vernard C. Martin)
Subject: Re: Does anyone post answers?
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: 11 May 1995 00:26:39 -0400
Message-ID: <3os3lv$83a@cleon.cc.gatech.edu>

clin@cs.umd.edu (Charles Lin) wrote:
>    I know that one annoying fact about newsgroups is that those
>who are knowledgeable about, say, PVM, don't want to waste their
>time discussing solutions to simple problems that other users might
>be having, but in bigger newsgroups, it seems that there are
>always a few people available for answering some questions.
>I don't see much in the way of follow-ups, nor of posts.  Are
>those who are PVM experts just shying away from this forum?

I suspect that several things are happening. One is that yes, the experts
are shying away from the answers that are of the "RTFM" type. In most cases,
no one wants to help someone who doesn't appear to have helped themselves.
Second, the folks are responding to the simple questions via email which use
as much bandwidth. And third, many of the questions that are asked here are
so vague that it is alsmost impossible to do anything other than ask the
questioner for more information. For example, someone downloads PVM and can't
get any of the sample programs to run and then posts asking for any help.
With just the info "I can't get it to run" it is unlikely to get an answer.

In bigger newsgroups (by bigger you mean more messages posted per day I
assume) then you have a bigger sample of folks that are willing to "hold
hands" with the folks that are having problems.

Personally, I don't mind helping folks but when the questions are obviously
from the manual, I let them go. 

just my two cents worth
Vernard
-- 
Vernard Martin (vernard@cc.gatech.edu) Georgia Tech College of Computing
<A HREF="http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/m/Vernard.Martin/">my home page </A>

