The grand-daddy of Usenet/Forum FAQ's...please give me your opinion ...
Hi guys,
I have been following the works of an old-school hacker by the name of Eric Raymond for quite some time. I first ran across his name while searching for resumés to template the "Technical Expertise" part of my resumé from. He has a quite extraordinary resumé, BTW. If you're interested after reading everything else, try doing a search for his name on the net.
He recently wrote a FAQ geared towards those new to support forums and newsgroups. The FAQ is written from the standpoint of a hacker (and here we define hacker according to the official presently accepted definition -
A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their
capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.)
Now that that's out of the way, I find this FAQ to be one of the most well-thought-out, informative, and to-the-point documents about any part of the Internet, period. It applies not only to those wanting to ask questions in forums, but seems to (although not written to) establish a new standard for interacting online. I was thoroughly impressed by the candid and exacting manner in which he conveys his "words of wisdom".
The version I found was included as a preface to the FAQ for "The SmoothWall Project" (formerly known as "The Linux Router Project"), and if you are interested, per the author's request, I have included the copyright page, which includes links to this project, as the first page of the FAQ. I extracted the Preface from the rest of the document, but if you would like to view the rest of it, simply click the on link on the first page.
It is written in the manner of a seasoned hacker teaching Joe User, but the message applies to any person out there attempting to inquire about anything via non-pay support forums (this means US!) I personally believe EVERYONE should be required to read Eric's FAQ before they can even register to post in a forum. (OK, maybe I'm being a little facetious, but you'll see what I mean after you read it.) Well, anyway, it's here:
<a href="http://members.home.net/rprestenback/Smart%20Questions.pdf" target="_blank">Posting FAQ by Eric Raymond</a>
And, if you read the document, you may even recognize my new tag ;)