The mission of our original site unix.com, a mission which we easily accomplished for decades, was to be an open knowledge base where everyone is welcome to post technical questions and answers; including various approaches to solve a problem. The culture of unix.com was always to help people learn to solve their own problems by defining their problems clearly and posting their own attempts to solve their technical issues.
Our moderators have always played a key role in this mission; and we owe the success of this site to the many moderators who encourage people who post questions that:
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Include the details of the operating system, including version, of the technologies they are working with; and
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Include their attempts to solve their own problem, including code, data samples and error messages;
In their role as moderators, we have a long-standing culture at unix.com that when a moderator requests additional information from someone who is attempting to solve a problem, that other members should not reply to the original poster unless they are requesting additional information, following the lead of the moderator.
On our new site, community.unix.com, we do not have the same set of software tools we developed over time at unix.com to hide answers and replies posted when a member has not yet replied to a moderator's question.
It is very important for members here to not post answers to questions when a member has not replied to a moderator's request for additional information. This includes, for example, a moderator's request for someone to:
- Post operating system(s) and versions information of the system they are working with;
- Post samples of both data in and expected data out;
- Sample of their code and / or commands they have created or tried to solve their problem;
- Error messages and log file information;
- Attempts to modify solutions provided by other members and the results.
Our original site at unix.com was not a site with a mission where posters can "fly by" and post some poorly constructed or question and expect others do their work for them. Software problems, in general, are easy to solve when we take the time to actually define the problem. Knowing or understanding the problem is often 80% of the path to finding a solution.
I cannot emphasize how important it is to encourage people to think and organize their problems before attempting to solve them. When we encourage people to organize and formulate their questions in a professional way, we are teaching them how to solve problems, in general. Software is relatively easy. Software is not quantum physics or intergalactic human space travel. It's software, right in front of our eyes, and almost all software problems, let us say "99.999%" or more, are easy to solve when we know what the exact problem is.
We need all people who post here to follow our moderators lead and not subvert our mission by not providing technical answers to users who have not (yet) answered a moderator's question to a poster or their request for additional information.
The only software tool available (to my knowledge) with current forum software, "Discourse", to hide individual posts is the "flagging" system. The flagging system can be used to specify a custom reason a post was flagged, so please flag replies to posts by users (even if they are senior members or moderators) who reply to posters who have ignored a moderator's question or not replied.
Example Flagging
Sorry for such a long post, so I wish to close by adding that unix.com and now community.unix.com have never had a mission to enforce interoperability or coding standards unless a user has specifically asked for a solution which is "cross platform" or "fully standards compliant". Our mission is to help users solve their "problem of the day or week", not to force or encourage users to write code or formulate solutions to a "standard" or an "outside committee-based requirement" which does not apply to them or their organization. Most companies pay their employees to build and solve IT problems on their company platforms, not to build "cross platform, cross-company" solutions. Our mission is to help solve technical problems for individuals and organizations, not "the world", so we are not a "standards enforcing site or body".
We are here, as professionals, to help show people that there are myriad ways to solve technical problems and that all problems, especially basic software problems are easily solved when we take the time to understand and define what the underlying problem is, relative to the operating system and environmental constraints.
In addition, we are not here, as a kind of "candy store" to do others work for them or to think for them; or to guess at solutions when posted refuse to define their problem(s) or apply the suggestions offered by our very experienced, knowledgeable members. Doing other's work for them is not the ethos of our community. We reference our sources here, in a professional manner, and we do not plagiarize the work of others.
In the future, I may modify our Discourse software "flagging feature" to change the flagging system to support our mission better, because I am noticing recently that some users are ignoring requests for additional information; and other users are posting "answers" to questions when a user has ignored a request for the user to post more information.
Thank you for your contributions; and please follow our rules and culture here to insure users are posting system information, software version numbers and attempting do define and solve their own problems.
As the very old saying goes (something like this):
"Give someone a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime."
We are here, as IT professionals, to show people how to fish, not to simply feed them fish." This has always been the mission of unix.com and that mission has not changed in this crazy era of misinformation and social media "popularity contests" of today. For all who want to post in a professional way, helping "teach people how to fish", this technical site is for you.
Also, if you wish to help moderate our site and help us enforce our mission, please contact me via private message. We need moderators who are interested to support our mission and enforce our rules. This is more important than having moderators who are "the top technical talent or the best programmers".
Thank you.
