Kathy Sierra has an awesome post on how communities grow. Her core points are around making new users feel at home and not 'slamming' anyone if they ask a stupid question.
Her post is interesting as it contradicts completely another famous article on a similar topic - Eric S Raymond on 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way'. I've seen ESR's article linked to a lot and I have a lot of issues with the general attitude of the article - it is never ok to tell someone to 'RTFM' or 'STFW'. It's not tough to type out the answer and gently nudge them to look at the manual the next time.
Personally, I've been guilty of this on a lot of mailing lists, both within Microsoft and outside. A bad habit I would really like to fix :(
Her post is interesting as it contradicts completely another famous article on a similar topic - Eric S Raymond on 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way'. I've seen ESR's article linked to a lot and I have a lot of issues with the general attitude of the article - it is never ok to tell someone to 'RTFM' or 'STFW'. It's not tough to type out the answer and gently nudge them to look at the manual the next time.
Personally, I've been guilty of this on a lot of mailing lists, both within Microsoft and outside. A bad habit I would really like to fix :(
