From: Theodore Heise on
On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:38:25 -0700,
mikey coons <rukidding(a)aol.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the answers to what I can ask here, it really helps.
> It kills me to ask for assistance for anything and I get the
> drift of who hangs out here.

One thing that I didn't see mentioned was to check the FAQ to see
if your question has been previously answered before asking it
here. You probably already know this, but I thought it might be
worth a mention.

Here's a snippet from the latest posting on August 13:


The FAQ which may be frequently referred to in messages posted to
the newsgroup may be found in its original text form at

http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt

There is also an HTML-rendered copy at

http://l0k1.free.fr/aolsfaq.html


--
Theodore (Ted) Heise <theo(a)heise.nu> Bloomington, IN, USA
From: Michael Black on
Theodore Heise (theo(a)heise.nu) writes:
> One thing that I didn't see mentioned was to check the FAQ to see
> if your question has been previously answered before asking it
> here. You probably already know this, but I thought it might be
> worth a mention.
>
Or just a search, of the web or of the newsgroups (and sometimes
to weed out the junk a specific newsgroup). I got into the habit
in 1996 when I first had full internet access, and most of the time
someone has indeed asked the question before you. Sometimes all
you find is a question, and no reply, but even knowing that someone
else has the problem can be helpful in dealing with the problem.

It's also useful to read the newsgroup on a constant basis. You
can pick up things by osmosis, and at the very least when Problem
X comes along you may remember seeing it covered before, which helps
you to search for said messages. Too many people think a newsgroup
is something to come to when there's a problem.

When a new release of Slackware comes along, even if someone hasn't
move up, it's worth starting to save messages that look useful (of
course, determing usefulness likely counts on having familiarity
with Linux and/or Slackware), in anticipation of the upgrade. I
saved a bunch of posts right after Slack 12 came out, because if
others were having problems, I just might have them too. I can
always delete the messages later.

Michael