In article <199401311949.NAA43176 at audumla.students.wisc.edu>, afwagner at STUDENTS.WISC.EDU (Andrew Wagner) writes:
> I hereby congratulate David Doak on his witty response to the student
> question issue.
..some stuff deleted for brevity
> I always remember my teachers saying "There are no stupid questions." I
> will repeat that:
>> THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS!!!
..more trimming performed
>> Andy Wagner
>>Hear hear! to Andy and David. Why do people subscribe to this group, since
it is a "general" forum?
a) I want to post a question.
- post away, and you can skip anything that doesn't answer it.
b) I like answering questions.
- then you should be happy here.
c) I just want information on what I am interested in.
- Aha, the tricky one!
So, how do you cope with infoglut (*horrible* term) on a day to day
basis? The volume of posting is really just a symptom of this. The only
way to decide if something is useful to you is to read it - and this includes
posts by anyone of any level of ability. Stratification by qualification
is just snobbery. I find that there is much to learn from almost any
question, no matter how nai"ve. The "obvious" ones can be answered immediately
and the weirder ones can give new insights into the subject. It *is* easy
to be irritated by a simplistic/poorly phrased/badly spelled posting but
you can either ignore it or do something about it - the problem lies with
*you* not the person doing the posting. A short spell of teaching is a great
way to be come acclimatised to an inquisitive atmosphere (and so is bringing
up children, or so I am told). At the moment the volume of perceived "student
postings" is far outweighed by this discussion of the subject so I do not
think the "problem" should be generating so much steam.
So, keep up the (well thought out) postings!
Bernard
PS: If you want to see a "newsgroup gone mad" with several hundred postings a
day (and most of them rubbish :-) ) then pay a visit to rec.humor
Bernard Murray
bernard at elsie.nci.nih.gov
