OT: suggestion! (was Re: [Samba] !!ATTENTION NEWBIES!!)

[John H Terpstra]

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, David Brodbeck wrote:

>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robert Adkins II [mailto:radkins at impelind.com]
>
> > 	I have read a few more of your responses. It appears that you
> > believe wholeheartedly that your more advanced questions are going
> > unanswered simply because of the volume of lower skilled questions.
>
> I see it go both ways.
>
> The really "interesting" problems that uncover new bugs in the Samba code
> generally get a lot of attention.  (Sometimes forwarding them to
> samba-technical can be productive, incidentally.)

Obviously, any real bugs need to be fixed asap. Many bugs are NOT
interesting - just a right royal pain!

> The easy problems generally get answered eventually, too, even if it's just
> with a pointer to the right section of the manual.

I can not speak for anyone else, but my approach is to look carefully at
the posting (typically about 10 seconds). I answer if:

	- the user is new and shows they have tried to solve the problem

	- the user is experienced and made an obvious error

	- some else's help is wrong

	- the problem is not well documented either in samba code or
		through the mailing list archives

	- the problem pertains to something I can contribute something to

I do NOT answer if the answer can be readily found. This demonstrates that
the enquirer is lazy and wants to abuse my time and energy.

> It's the ones in between, the tricky problems that are difficult to work
> out, but probably not actual bugs, that sometimes tend to languish
> unanswered.

You will note that sometimes I do NOT provide the answer, but I do ask a
question that contains the answer.

Example:
--------
Recently someone who had a clear name resolution problem was not using
WINS. They did not want to use WINS: I do NOT have time to educate every
subscriber who does NOT WANT to use WINS as to it's benefits in a NetBIOS
over TCP/IP environment. Some of my help in this area has gone on for over
10 interchanges - and I am tired of that. So I simply sent back a reply
that asked "Why are you sure you do not want to use WINS?" - from that
point forward it's up to the recipient to do some more home work.

>From my analysis of my January respsonses the average time I spent per
reply was around 13 minutes. Most replies take about 1-2 minutes, but a
few too MUCH longer. Several took over 1 hour.

I do carefully take note of problem areas and then try to capture useful
hints and answers. These get fed back into documentation. Most of the new
documentation is going into Samba-3.0.0. Hopefully the 3.0.0 release will
set a new standard in helpful documentation.

We need to be realistic though: the new documentation will largely close
gaps in older samba functionality. It will take a while to prepare and
include this same level of utility in documentation pertaining to new
features. This is a slow but beneficial process and is a key reason why I
often ask people who have solved a problem to document their solution and
to contribute it. Unfortunately, most people we help do NOT contribute
back in this manner (but human nature is like that).

- John T.
-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org