4 ms·

I think I would prefer a greycat to be among the people helping me most of the time. Being correct and helpful even if you are not nice about it is still pretty

I think I would prefer a greycat to be among the people helping me most of the time. Being correct and helpful even if you are not nice about it is still pretty good. I think answerers can be correct, helpful and nice, but getting a least two of those is good enough to be worth listening to.

scubbo 4y ago
You're absolutely right, I wholeheartedly agree, and in fact I think the "greycat-dyad" is the best of the 2/3 situations: * Correct and helpful - greycat. Still gets you to a solution _and_ you learn something, at the cost of a bit of bruised feelings. * Helpful and nice - shows you how to go about answering (or asking!) your question properly, though perhaps not solving your immediate problem. Arguably the second-best of the 2/3 options? I'd rather "learn how to learn" than "get the technically-correct (but not actually correct) answer to my flawed question" * Correct and nice - probably the least-good of the 2/3 options? The querent continues to labour under the misunderstanding that brought them to their incorrect question, and might waste more time (for themselves or others) down the line. Still - better than any one property alone! That said, let's make sure not to brush under the carpet that _it is possible to achieve all three_; that it costs much less time and energy to be nice than is usually claimed; and that the benefits (an improved personal reputation, a more-welcoming community in which folks aren't afraid to ask questions), though immediately intangible, are considerable.
p1necone 4y ago
In my experience the greycats of the world tend to have pretty high false positive rates. They'll identify people asking X-Y problems and steer them in the right direction, but they'll also be deliberately unhelpful and snarky to a lot of people asking perfectly reasonably questions. There's another persona similar to greycat who loves to tell people the answer to their question is in the docs and refuse to help. The answer probably is in the docs, but the docs are 500 pages long and the person asking the question doesn't know the right keyword to search for to find the answer, and the answer in the documentation is probably ambiguous or unclear to a beginner even if they did find it. There's also the persona that identifies the askers problem, and knows the answer but thinks they can teach the asker a lesson by guiding them towards working out the answer on their own. This can be a great approach, but often the person doing this doesn't realize that there's some crucial piece of information that the asker doesn't have that means it's going to be impossible for them to make the logical leap required to get to the answer on their own. From the askers perspective it feels like they're getting Jedi training from Yoda, except Yoda has had a few too many swamp beers.
- scubbo 4y ago
  > the docs are 500 pages long and the person asking the question doesn't know the right keyword to search for to find the answer This is an important aspect - what seems obvious and easy-to-solve to an expert can be anything but to a newbie.

scubbo 4y ago

You're absolutely right, I wholeheartedly agree, and in fact I think the "greycat-dyad" is the best of the 2/3 situations: * Correct and helpful - greycat. Still gets you to a solution _and_ you learn something, at the cost of a bit of bruised feelings. * Helpful and nice - shows you how to go about answering (or asking!) your question properly, though perhaps not solving your immediate problem. Arguably the second-best of the 2/3 options? I'd rather "learn how to learn" than "get the technically-correct (but not actually correct) answer to my flawed question" * Correct and nice - probably the least-good of the 2/3 options? The querent continues to labour under the misunderstanding that brought them to their incorrect question, and might waste more time (for themselves or others) down the line. Still - better than any one property alone! That said, let's make sure not to brush under the carpet that _it is possible to achieve all three_; that it costs much less time and energy to be nice than is usually claimed; and that the benefits (an improved personal reputation, a more-welcoming community in which folks aren't afraid to ask questions), though immediately intangible, are considerable.

p1necone 4y ago

In my experience the greycats of the world tend to have pretty high false positive rates. They'll identify people asking X-Y problems and steer them in the right direction, but they'll also be deliberately unhelpful and snarky to a lot of people asking perfectly reasonably questions. There's another persona similar to greycat who loves to tell people the answer to their question is in the docs and refuse to help. The answer probably is in the docs, but the docs are 500 pages long and the person asking the question doesn't know the right keyword to search for to find the answer, and the answer in the documentation is probably ambiguous or unclear to a beginner even if they did find it. There's also the persona that identifies the askers problem, and knows the answer but thinks they can teach the asker a lesson by guiding them towards working out the answer on their own. This can be a great approach, but often the person doing this doesn't realize that there's some crucial piece of information that the asker doesn't have that means it's going to be impossible for them to make the logical leap required to get to the answer on their own. From the askers perspective it feels like they're getting Jedi training from Yoda, except Yoda has had a few too many swamp beers.

scubbo 4y ago
> the docs are 500 pages long and the person asking the question doesn't know the right keyword to search for to find the answer This is an important aspect - what seems obvious and easy-to-solve to an expert can be anything but to a newbie.