[TAG] help / nature of tag

[Heather Stern]

Per my usual habits when I see something turning to flames, I've gotten out
the asbestoes undies, the marshmallows for roasting, and seriously sharpened
my scisssors.

Finding a lot of frayable edges in the frayable material presented to me,
I'm rewriting this one from whole cloth.

Bitwise numbers chosen for their amusement factor.  That these elements are
also not particularly related to each other and might be considered without
intermingling them might help keep the roaring campfire down to toasting
marshmallows rather than watching sparks fly.

1. Yeah, I think I might have put the notes about the etiquette of sending a
mail with the subject 'Help' (which is terribly useless) after a question
I'd decided to answer, rather than before it.

2. Yes, the querent has no sense of humor and thinks we're his lackeys.

4. Give the guy credit, he quoted his error message.

8. Incoming queue dynamics: I don't see how whining that we aren't like
"real" open sourcerers expresses an opinion that we should reply more
like we're a batch of friends interrupted by questions at a coffee shop
and less like our brains are slabs of meat at the deli counter.  We aren't a
queue.  Maybe we're a hash.  Many people seem to think we're a dictionary.

16. Any "fixes" to our management techniques that don't include "making
linux just a little more fun" are in my opinion, straying off topic rather
than toward it.  Being snippy at each other doesn't improve things either.
I realize that we have a fine tradition of being curmudgeonly.  But let's
not give any visitors the impression that any of us actually dislike
each other; that's counterproductive.

More importantly, let's not give any of *us* the impression that any of us
actively dislike each other; I don't like to see friendships end :(

32. "Short is good, funny is good, short and funny is best."  -- Rotsler.
In contrast, the answer guy's own columens favored not just the answer,
but how to learn, and where to investigate more about the topic.
This tended to encourage rather than discourage the thread, if the user
didn't get a complete answer.  Anybody who can manage a good balance
between this will be helping generate threads worthy of publication.

Am I missing anything?  Redirect flames to /dev/marshmallow;  I'm only
looking for things that will improve our results as a magazine.

-* Heather Stern * star at starshine.org * The Answer Gang's Editor Gal *-
   The Linux Gazette (http://www.linuxgazette.net/) is under the LDP