Re: portable.int problems

[holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

Quoting "J. R. Fox" :
> I acknowledge Robert's (valid) point about repetitious posts and
> many-times-solved problems . . . but we're not all highly accomplished
> users here, nor are we blessed with total recall, and there's no telling
> who will access the List when with what problem they've not had to deal
> with before or recently (and so had not been monitoring all threads
> pertaining to the topic at hand). Until there are offical FAQs
> somewhere to which said repetitious questioners can be referred, the
> response options seem to come down to: 1) ignore the query altogether,
> recommended vs. #2) Dis the questioner, 3) Suggest a search of the List
> message archive [The principal Tech Advisor on another list I subscribe
> to has an all-purpose Reply -- "GOOGLE is your friend." -- which he uses
> when impatient with a query he regards as easily resolvable elsewhere.
> Hey, something like this could even go on a Save/Get key !], or 4)
> Recycle an earlier answer to someone else, right out of the Sent
> basket. I tend to go with #4, where it seems like too much trouble to
> craft a fresh response.

5) Answer tersely, grumpily, AND dis the questioner? That feels right to me.
Look, Google is not our friend. It's too bad, but that's the way it is. We're
thinking about some ways of making it our friend, or alternatively of replacing
Google with our own search engine. But in the meantime, YOU answer the same
question 18 hours after somebody else asked it! It's ridicul