If they ask you how to do something, and you respond by telling them how something works, you're not paying attention to their question. And then you complain that "newbies" don't pay attention the documentation! Sheesh.
Good point... But when a newbie asks a too general question, you often have to explain how the thing works before you can give a good answer. The fact is that you can often feel that he is overlooking something because he doesn't understand the way things works and get together.
For example, if he tells you "I can't install Linux because the installer tells me I don't have free space on my hard disk, although I have plenty free space in windows", you'll have to explain him what is a filesystem and a disk partition, and possibly that he'll have to resize his windows partition and then what is defragmentation, etc.
In such cases, you can't just give him a simple answer, because when he'll come back to his computer, he won't be able to redo what you told him if he didn't understant at least the basics of how things fit together.
But well, I guess that a correct answer would be "I'll have to explain you how it works before I can give you a good response".
Slashdot Mirror
I sure do trust slashdot for the incorrect spelling !
Good point... But when a newbie asks a too general question, you often have to explain how the thing works before you can give a good answer. The fact is that you can often feel that he is overlooking something because he doesn't understand the way things works and get together.
For example, if he tells you "I can't install Linux because the installer tells me I don't have free space on my hard disk, although I have plenty free space in windows", you'll have to explain him what is a filesystem and a disk partition, and possibly that he'll have to resize his windows partition and then what is defragmentation, etc.
In such cases, you can't just give him a simple answer, because when he'll come back to his computer, he won't be able to redo what you told him if he didn't understant at least the basics of how things fit together.
But well, I guess that a correct answer would be "I'll have to explain you how it works before I can give you a good response".