[conspire] I get mail

[Rick Moen]

Just doing a sanity check:  Was I somehow being unreasonable?  

I get huge amounts of personal mail from utter strangers -- like this
guy -- who find my e-mail address as co-author of the essay "How to Ask
Questions the Smart Way" (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) 
and want personal, free-of-charge help with their technical problems.

This stuff hits me from all over the world, on average half a dozen or
more a day, every day without end -- and the real irony is that our
essay VERY clearly says to _not do that_.  That's part of the POINT of
the essay.

(Some other mail comes because I'm author of the Linux User Group HOWTO
for the Linux Documentation Project, but that's typically a lot more
clueful.)

Anyhow, I don't think I was the least bit unpleasant in my initial
three-line reply (in the middle of a busy business day) that he's
bitching about.  And honestly, do _you_ just try to offload your
technical problems to people you've never met, without explanation,
without offer of payment, etc. -- and then act all offended when they're
perplexed about why you're bugging them?




[I didn't save his original mail, but most of it's quoted here:]


 From: Rick Moen
 Date: 28 April 2005 06:18:01
 To: delghuys at botsnet.bw
 Subject: Re: News servers

Quoting [a guy]:

> I want to get access to Usenet, but my ISP don't give access to
> newsgroups.
> 
> I searched Google for free news servers and it sent me to
> NewsServers.net.  There I got a list of free ones. However, many of
> them are only test servers and a lot don't allow posting. Is there any
> free news servers that you know of, that you could recommend?

First, I don't understand why you're asking this of _me_.

Second, that sounds like the sort of question you should ask on Usenet
itself, e.g., by posting via Google Groups. Sorry.




 Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:59:05 +0200 (South Africa Standard Time)
 X-Mailer: IncrediMail (2001184)
 From: [a guy]:
 To: rick at linuxmafia.com
 Subject: Re: News servers

Dear Rick

Thanks for your reply and I apologize humbly for taking up some of your
valuable time. I read your and Eric S. Raymond's document "How to ask
smart questions", so I didn't expect the friendliest answer. I tried to
state my question in the best possible way (I'm not God you know) but
still you handled my e-mail as if it was a piece of rubbish.

To answer your question: I asked you because you seem to be an expert in
your field ("hackers run Usenet", if I could quote from one of Raymond's
FAQ s). I enjoyed your article on how to run a successful Linux user
group, so I thought that I might get a good answer from you. I'm
disappointed in your rude way of handling my question, but I'm still
interested in becoming a hacker. So, thank you for your time, I promise
I'll take my questions elsewhere next time.

Best of luck on your projects.

[signed]




 Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:25:53 -0700
 From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
 To: [a guy]
 Subject: Re: News servers

Quoting [a guy]:

> Thanks for your reply and I apologize humbly for taking up some of
> your valuable time.

It's not a problem.

> I read your and Eric S. Raymond's document "How to ask smart
> questions", so I didn't expect the friendliest answer. I tried to
> state my question in the best possible way (I'm not God you know) but
> still you handled my e-mail as if it was a piece of rubbish.

Actually, I was trying to tell you where you should ask, to maximise
your likelihood of getting a useful answer.  As such, it was the best
answer I could give you.

> To answer your question: I asked you because you seem to be an expert
> in your field ("hackers run Usenet", if I could quote from one of
> Raymond's FAQs).

Unfortunately, I _personally_ have no idea where to find free-of-charge
news servers these days, but I'm sure the knowledge is accessible _on_
Usenet.  Thus my suggestion that you ask a collection of people who
would know, rather than one private individual who, as it turns out,
doesn't.

Additionally, the asking and answering of that question would benefit
the community, in a way that asking in private e-mail doesn't.  That
point should have been clear from Eric's and my essay.

As a related point, I spend a _lot_ of time helping people on Usenet and
in Linux user group mailing lists.  I probably forego untold amounts of
business income by doing so.  Each time I help someone there, I also
indirectly help a hundred _other_ people who either read the thread and
find it relevant to their situations, or find the thread after the fact
during Google or Google Groups searches.

Whereas, this discussion accomplishes none of that, and mostly just
chews up your and my time, going over matters that _were_ more than
adequately covered in my and Eric's essay.

So, please ask in an appropriate forum.  I'm sure you're a nice guy and
I would enjoy your company, but you're defeating your own aim and now
compounding your original error by making matters worse.  Wouldn't you
really rather go to people who _can_ help, and stop wasting your and my
time trying to convince yourself and me that you've been mistreated?

And, by the way, speaking of courtesy, it _is_ friggin' rude to suddenly
write to a complete and utter stranger, without even one word of
explanation, asking that stranger in private to solve your personal
problem without recompense.

I didn't mention that the first time, specifically because I was being
_cordial_.