Any newbie Linux forums 4037

But there is a clbutt of people who actually don't ask questions. Or rather, they form the questions in order to find an answer, but they don't state the question out loud.

No, people aren't born knowing everything. But some can find answers without asking other people questions. Or at the very least the questions are in the context of existing material, to fill in a needed bit rather than ask a broad question to avoid reading up on the topic.

I've never asked a question about Linux. That doesn't mean I know everything or that I don't have problems. But the questions are just in my mind, to help me define the problem before I seek the answer.

Often, I do find what I need by doing searches, and yes the newsgroups are often the best source of answers (or even just the questions, to see that my problem is not unique). I admit that this wouldn't work if others weren't asking the questions in the first place.

But it also means trying things. You try something, you get some results, and you use those results to try further things. When I bought a scanner last year, I was stuck with not only not knowing what was supposed to happen with a scanner, but not knowing what would happen with USB, since it was my first ever USB device. I actually tossed a different distribution on an unused parbreastion to gather results from that, and once I saw what was supposed to happen, I was able to get my distribution working.

Learning is change, and change is about balance. But much of the time that balance can't be found because the people posting the questions are leaving out bits of information, or aren't conveying their level of competency. When those are missing, it often means people answering have to guess. "How do I make an RF oscillator out of an op-amp" is the sort of question you often seen in the sci.electronics.* hierarchy. Some will actually answer straight out, but others will try to define where the question is coming from. There may be a good reason to use an op-amp, but it may simply be that the level of the poster is such that they can't conceive of using anything but an op-amp, which isn't usually a good choice at radio frequencies.

It reminds me of when a friend got a Mac about ten years ago. I set it up for her, and then she kept asking how to do things. I automatically reached for the mouse, and she chastised me for it; "I can do it myself". But the reality was I had no realy experience with it, but my automatic reaction was to look at obvious choices on the menu. I was learning by trying things, she was learning by expecting me to know the answers and tell her. Ultimately, she could get to the same place as I simply by trying things.

Michael

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