Questions and Answers on the Python lists
Over the years of my involvement with the Python community, I have seen many questions asked and answered on the Python lists. I’m a fairly regular watcher on python-list, python-win32 and python-tutor and an occasional on a couple of other lists, including python-dev. For my part, I nearly always access them via their email interface. But other people view them through gmane, Usenet, Google Groups and a handful of web-style mirror sites.
Many people have commented on the generally friendly and helpful atmosphere which prevails on all the Python lists, and justifiably. You get the occasional ding-dong thread or a see-sawing to-and-fro between opposing parties, neither of whom can bring himself to relinquish his own position or to accept the other’s. But even that rarely ends in bloodshed.
But my entirely anecdotal impression is that there is a class of questioner who asks a question and fails to respond when an answer is given. And, as someone who’s provided one or two answers in his time, I’m moved to wonder: why? Is it because the OP feels that no thanks or response is necessary — that the list has done its duty and the matter is closed? Is it because the response took more than a few minutes to come back, and the OP wanted a quick answer or none at all? Is it because the answer doesn’t help but the OP doesn’t feel entitled to come back and ask for more? Is it because the OP expects any response to come to him personally and not to the list as a whole, and so doesn’t keep checking back?
I’ve no idea, and I doubt that one case meets all. As it happens, in answer to help I have offered, I have had many responses on and off-list thanking me, or asking for more information, occasionally offering to buy me a drink! And for all those I am very grateful: this is a friendly community built around the creative art of programming, and it’s nice to know that someone’s benefitted from your help and is grateful in turn.
But it would be a shame if there were a class of user who came, not as a potential contributor to the wider community, but as a mercenary who wants merely to get something from Python and walk away.
Phil Mayes said,
Wrote on May 3, 2009 @ 8:38 pm
I usually both offer and acknowledge help, eg on the wxPython list, but the other week, I had a regular expression question, so I asked on the python list using GMANE as I’m not subscribed. I got several useful replies, and then COULD NOT SEE HOW TO RESPOND TO THAT THREAD. So my belated thanks to those two people.
tim said,
Wrote on May 3, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
@Phil: on the very few occasions I’ve used gmane I’ve never found its interface particularly useful and I think I’ve ended up responding either via the equivalent Google Group if there was one, or via the mail archive, again if there was one, by clicking on the sender’s address which is linked as a mailto: with the list address and subject filled in. I’ve no idea what it does to message thread tracking, but at least it’s one way.
Wrote on May 3, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
I found after a number of years that the community on comp.lang.python had matured and had increased in numbers. Others gave just as good advice as I could give and were just as polite. I had also decided to start my own blog and, as Google allowed me to save a blog query and report on all python mentions in blogs, I decided to branch out and answer blog queries on Python, or where I thought a Python based answer was relevant.
From the start I said I was going to be polite at all times, as i think some people, the right kind of people, will be influenced by how I, a member of the Python community behave, and get interested in Python.
Like in mail lists, it is hard to judge what good you might be doing, but I like to think I’m doing my little bit to help shape a community I like.
- Paddy.
dads said,
Wrote on May 4, 2009 @ 1:35 am
I generally didn’t thank the nice people that replied to my questions simply because I’m not sure what happens to the email (I’m new to mailing lists!). I just thought that a lot of thank you style emails that have no decent content wouldn’t be any help to people searching the lists - even though I must admit it does seem very impolite to me. So I guess a thank you is the correct etiquette?
Wrote on May 4, 2009 @ 4:16 am
Gmane is fine when you use it through a newsreader. All of the various web interfaces to newsgroups, forums and emails suffer from varying degrees of suckage.
Curly Joe said,
Wrote on May 4, 2009 @ 4:18 am
“but as a mercenary who wants merely to get something from Python and walk away.”
This hits the nail on the head, in part. I would guess that less than 1/2 of the questioners respond with a “thanks”. Some are so much in their own world that this doesn’t even occur to them. To the extreme was one questioner, on one of the forums, who posted a link to the homework problem. This person would not even copy and paste the question. Then, when someone who responded did not give the complete answer, but just a suggestion on how to solve it, the OP bereated the person who was answering, saying that they didn’t read the entire site at the link posted and should come back with a complete solution. People are people and some are worth spending our free time on, and some are not. But how do you tell the difference?
tim said,
Wrote on May 4, 2009 @ 6:06 am
@dads: this is a slightly difficult one. Some people frown upon emails which constitute low-level noise, such as those which just say “me-too” or, perhaps, those which just say “thanks”. My own feeling is that a sign of goodwill is more important than a very slight amount of noise. But if you’re in doubt, it’s surely always acceptable to send off-list thanks.
It’s not just a question of thanks, also, but of documenting the result of the suggestion. Did it help? Was the question misunderstood? Someone coming along later to search would know straightaway whether it’s worth pursuing the suggestion.
Iain said,
Wrote on May 4, 2009 @ 9:44 am
I know that you are not fishing for thanks here, but your responses to other people’s questions have been very helpful to me in the past.
So thanks!
Wrote on May 4, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
There’s a-sort-of-nother possibility which occurs to me, which overlaps with the ideas you discussed already, but may be hard to see if you’re a high-functioning, programming expert, list regular. I’m thinking that sometimes, some people, in some environments, just don’t have the spare capacity to write the reply.
I’m not talking about plain apathy exactly, nor cavalier thoughtlessness. I’m just thinking of an average programmer struggling away on some problem that is just one of a dozen problems that they uncovered that day, and in getting bogged down trying out the suggestions they see in list replies, they just don’t identify the ‘aha!’ moment in which they could usefully contribute back a reply, and they don’t subscribe to the list normally, so they probably don’t end up visiting the list again for another 18 months.
And they aren’t intimately familiar with the list: they don’t subscribe, so aren’t steeped in its norms or expectations, nor in exactly how the interface they have chosen to access the list (eg. Google groups) works, with regard to replying and threads and quoting. So crafting the reply is an unfamiliar process which lends just that quantum of extra cognitive overhead for them to try and fit into a busy day.
Just a thought.
tim said,
Wrote on May 4, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
@Iain: I did sort of realise it might be viewed as a hint but, no, I wasn’t trying to fish. Thanks for taking the trouble to reply here in any case.
@Tartley: Take your point; I’ve never actually posted to, say, an MS SDK list about some odd feature I’ve encountered; but if I did I’d be at least one remove away from my comfort zone with the Python lists. And someone who doesn’t have even that experience to fall back on might end up even more bewildered.
It’s also true that a simple(ish) question like, say, “why is this statement failing?” can lead to enormous sidetracks, philosophical discussions, heated debates, alternate universe theories and so on. All of which is mighty interesting to some people. But just perplexing to the OP who just wanted to know…