David> By and large, you get much better response
  David> from a user community (mailing list, irc,
  David> news) if you come in saying: I've rtfm'd,
  David> tried X, Y, and Z, and cut twice and it's
  David> still too short!

Very true, but sometimes a person is so in the dark he
doesn't even know quite what questions to ask.

The very question that started this discussion
yesterday came up where I'm working yesterday. The
fellow at the next desk, who is a PC guy, but learning
Linux, is not coming up in graphical mode to a login
screen. He wanted to know why. Offhand I didn't know
the answer, because although I'm sure I've seen the
answer somewhere in the vast Linux literature, I have
no idea when or where.

However, I've been a Unix user for over 18 years, so I
suggested he look at his inittab and execute runlevel.
(It used to be who -r ... whatever happened to that
feature of who?) Sure enough he was booting to init 3.
So I suggested he change the inittab, and run init 5,
which he did, and the problem was solved.

I daresay a person could use Linux for a very long time
before ever becoming familiar with run levels and the
inittab. How is a new guy supposed to even know about
the existence of such a concept? Is it somewhere in the
installation instructions of each of the various
distros? I'd be surprised if it is, and even so, I'm
sure it's probably buried somewhere in a sea of
over-information.

So if people have a legitimate question and are
struggling with a problem that they don't know even
where to look for the answer, the kind thing to do is
to just give them a straight pointer. I've asked
thousands of questions in my experience, and have found
that a simple sentence pointing me in the right
direction can be worth way more than an 800-page
dissertation on a subject.

-- 
Lynn David Newton
Phoenix, AZ