[erlang-questions] unanswered beginner questions in the list

[David Mercer]

On Friday, June 01, 2012, Ulf Wiger wrote:

> On 1 Jun 2012, at 09:22, Joe Armstrong wrote:
> 
> > What usually happens is - I read the list every day and see a lot of
> > questions that I know
> > how to answer - but I don't immediately answer.
> >
> > The reason for this is that a) I haven't time and b)  I hope somebody
> > else will answer
> > and then I won't need to.
> 
> I also tend to defer answering to a lot of questions, for the above
> reasons,
> but also because I think answering questions is a great way for people
> to grow into the community, and I don't want to deny anyone that
> opportunity. :)

And see I'm sitting around thinking I could answer that, but Ulf would
probably give a better, more complete answer, so I'll leave it to him. :-)

> In my experience, this works pretty well, though. A few questions may
> fall
> through the cracks, but most of the time, I think people try to answer
> questions quickly and in a helpful tone.
> 
> And as Raimo said, the best way to get an answer is to resend, if a
> few days have passed - most likely, the question is then no longer on
> anyone's radar, but a polite reminder will usually do the trick.

That sounds a bit whiney, though.  My way of bumping a question is to add
some information to it, such as, "Since I asked this question 3 days ago, I
have tried X, Y, and Z, and none of those worked.  Anyone got any other
suggestions?"

Cheers,

DBM