Andrew Robinson wrote:
My point was this: if you have software that you think will be useful to people, tell them about it! How will people know that the software is useful if they don't know what it is?
Can you find out all about something in a few sentences? If you go to a conference and you hear about something new do they tell you in detail what that is?
A resounding NO!!! They provide a tidbit and those that are interested take the bait and research and learn. Those that are not interested do not.
Thus the speaker has done his job. He provided bait and enough clues to get people with initiative interested.
The same with the OP announcing the new mailing list. He is only talking about an educational source, not the software itself.
You (or other repliers) are correct. I could have easily googled "SELinux". But why would I bother if I have no clue what I'm googling. Yes it's probably more my loss than the developer's, but it is still the developer's loss as well.
How can ANYONE posting to the internet know what you do or do not know.?
The OP did tell people about the new mailing list, and the topic (SElinux). Anyone who has the attitude that 'I won't bother because I don't know what he is talking about' is just closing their own doors.
My point was that everyone should have enough initiative that, if they are even slightly interested in the topic, they will at least spend a few seconds to research the topic. A few seconds spent checking available resources will educate them greatly and then they can ask better questions and learn even more. Or they can decide they are not interested and leave it alone, with or without the time spent checking.
In this instance, I was not complaining about the original announcement. I was complaining about the "SELinux on Fedora" home page. If it's the home page, I think a sentence or two explaining what the software does or what it is used for would be appropriate and desirable. There was two or three printed pages worth of text about what had been done with the software. What's a couple of more sentences other than good advertising?
The OP was just providing information, not advertising for anything. I recall an earlier thread in this list on the topic of whether SElinux would be in FC2 and I IMHO the announcement was directed to those interested.
His announcement was just one more piece of bait for the interested, and should not be something for the uninitiated to whine about. The whine (mini-rant) I replied to was just that -- A statement by that poster that they were too disinterested to do anything for themselves, but MAYBE if spoon fed more information they MAY become interested.
You did not explicitly ruffle my feathers, I was commenting about the general attitude many of the posters here have of "tell me the answer" instead of "where can I find the answer".
I actually meant my criticism as constructive. I apologize for phrasing it in a way that ruffled feathers.
The 'mini-rant' was of the attitude that I abhor in many of the younger generation (and even in some of my own generation) in that they expect to have everything handed to them with no effort on their part.
I stand by my earlier comment that we as a whole community should not have to spoon feed information to people. If they are interested and it has a meaniing to them they should have the initiative to go find it, instead of whining because it was not all packaged up for them.
Andrew Robinson
Tom Diehl wrote:
On Sat, 6 Mar 2004, Andrew Robinson wrote:
Do you realize that in the first link, nowhere does it define what SELinux is? So if not for the second link, I would still be ignorant.
So what is your point? The guy was kind enough to answer your question and
now you are giving him a hard time about it!?!?!
I'm going off topic here. This is a pet peeve of mine. Someone will post an annoucement of an application or package on a mailing list or USENET news group. The announcement will describe in great detail what has been done to the software since the last release. However, the announcement will never reveal what the software does in the first place.
OK, there's my mini-rant for the day...:)
Ok, here is my mini-rant for the day. Instead of whining about things like this why not fire up
a browser and ask google? That is after all what it is for.
You just wasted more time whining about the announcment than it would have taken to look it up yourself.
In fact now you have me wasting time responding to STUPID threads like this.
This will be my one and only comment on this.
Tom
