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How Not to Ask a Question on a Mailing List

Posted July 5th, 2003 @ 10:51am by Erik J. Barzeski

Safe to say, I won't be visiting torellasoft.com for software any time soon.

From: Luca Torella <(removed)@torellasoft.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 20:03:44 +0200
To: cocoa-dev
Subject: toolbars in Cocoa

Could somebody help me with Toolbars?

Thanks,
Luca.

I'm reminded of some phrase with "helps those who help themselves"…

9 Comments »

9 Responses to "How Not to Ask a Question on a Mailing List"

  1. | Reply Justin Williams
    Posted 05 Jul 2003 at 6:31pm #

    Here's a tie-in to the grammar post...from the About page of their website.

    "This is what TorellaSOFT do:"

    Genius.

  2. | Reply hmm
    Posted 05 Jul 2003 at 6:35pm #

    Just a flying leap here but might the email address just be luca@.....

    I would cut the kid a break... he is young and doesn't seem to have a grasp of the english language.

  3. | Reply Mark Davis
    Posted 05 Jul 2003 at 8:33pm #

    It's just some freaky looking Italian guy on an old iMac. He probably hasn't learned much English yet (or Cocoa for that matter).

    http://www.torellasoft.com/staff.html

  4. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
    Posted 05 Jul 2003 at 10:20pm #

    The point is not that he's young - I encourage that. The point is that he's going to have to learn - quickly - how to better ask questions if he'd like good (helpful) responses.

  5. | Reply Hasan Diwan
    Posted 05 Jul 2003 at 10:58pm #

    Mr. Torella's company appears to be based in Italy, as his the whois entry shows below:

    Ed: Info Removed

    However, I saw that post on the mailing list as well, and referred the gent to the Apple documentation. I also felt like suggesting he take a look at a History of Hacking, but stopped short of actually suggesting this.

  6. | Reply Erik J. Barzeski
    Posted 05 Jul 2003 at 11:13pm #

    I removed the guy's personal information from the post above. I don't care where he's from or what language he speaks - the point is that he should learn - quickly I hope - how to ask a question in a way that nets a good response. "Help me please" ain't it.

  7. | Reply Steven Canfield
    Posted 06 Jul 2003 at 3:33am #

    Surely someone linked him to this: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

    There should be a bot running on #cocoa-dev that sends this URL to messages under say 150 characters.

  8. | Reply Hasan Diwan
    Posted 06 Jul 2003 at 3:02pm #

    Yes, I did link him to http://www.catb.org/~esr, but left finding the appropriate page to him.

  9. | Reply Stephane
    Posted 07 Jul 2003 at 6:06am #

    What about just asking him to send more information?

    His problem was that there was 2 autorelease on one data. Otherwise, his code was working thing.