{"id":543,"date":"2011-08-04T07:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T07:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/blogs\/paul\/post\/RTFM-No-seriously-RTFM-Then-ask-your-question.aspx"},"modified":"2014-11-14T12:01:02","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T20:01:02","slug":"rtfm-no-seriously-r-t-f-m-then-ask-your-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/rtfm-no-seriously-r-t-f-m-then-ask-your-question\/","title":{"rendered":"RTFM. No seriously, R.T.F.M. Then ask your question."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">There are several reasons why I&#8217;ve drastically cut back on the amount of time I spend in the various online SQL Server forums, including: <\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">People continuing to argue that the advice given to them is wrong (and I mean arguing even after me giving references suppporting the advice and explaining why my advice is correct)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">People asking questions that they could have found the answer to in Books Online or by Googling (yes, I prefer Google to Bing) a few keywords<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">#2 is mostly sheer laziness IMHO. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">When Kimberly was on the SQL team at Microsoft many moons ago, she was famous for replying on a 2000-person internal alias (paraphrasing) &#8220;If it takes you more time to type this email and send it to the alias than it would to look up the answer in Books Online, you&#8217;re wasting 2000 people&#8217;s time&#8221;. She got 17 responses, 15 of which commended her.\u00a0She has of course mellowed a little in her old age :-) <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">When one of my daughters comes to me saying they don&#8217;t understand how to do a math problem, I always ask them if they have read the instructions at the top of the page in their math workbook. Usually the answer is no, in which case I refuse to help until they&#8217;ve read the instructions, tried the problem again, and can explain what they think they&#8217;re supposed to do with the problem. The real world doesn&#8217;t have a friendly Dad there all the time to explain how to solve a problem. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">There are good reasons why products come with manuals, including: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">So that a company&#8217;s product support is not inundated with simple questions, saving the company money <\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">So that people can easily figure out how to use the product&#8217;s functions without bashing their head against a wall in frustration<\/span><\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">So that a company doesn&#8217;t get sued by failed <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.darwinawards.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">Darwin Award<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\"> candidates <\/span><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">E.g. &#8220;Do not operate the TreeMasher X3000 chainsaw with the diamond-tipped CutThroughAnything (TM) blade while drunk&#8221; <\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">E.g. &#8220;Do not attempt to unclog your new in-sink Eviscerator (TM) waste disposal unit using your hands while it is running&#8221; <\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">E.g. &#8220;Consuming excessive J\u00e4germeister in Seattle will result in uncontrolled karaoke singing&#8221;<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">However, sometimes reading the manual does no good whatsoever. For example, on our recent European trip, we rented a BMW in Frankfurt for a couple of weeks of touring around. For the life of me I couldn&#8217;t figure out how to start the damn car. I tried looking in the manual, but it was in German, which neither of us understands. Eventually (after 15mins of increasing frustration) I figured out you have to press the start button while pressing the brake pedal. But that was my fault, not BMW&#8217;s &#8211; the manual did say how to do it, but I just couldn&#8217;t understand the manual.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">Most of the time though, you can get a good idea of what you&#8217;re supposed to do by reading the manual. We&#8217;re currently writing the Denali JumpStart training material for Microsoft (like we&#8217;ve done since 2005 &#8211; see <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/sql-server-2008-jumpstart\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\"> for a description of the 2008 work). When we got hold of CTP-3 in early July we didn&#8217;t install the VMs we&#8217;d been given and then start randomly playing with stuff. We read BOL for the features we&#8217;re covering, and then started playing around. Why? So we didn&#8217;t waste time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Books Online is pretty comprehensive in terms of syntax and in the last year or two their guidance and background explanations have improved and expanded immensely &#8211; kudos to the BOL team! So at least have a look in there first.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">There&#8217;s a good reason why the website <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/lmgtfy.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">Let Me Google That For You<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\"> exists &#8211; because people get annoyed when others ask questions for which the answer can easily be found. The LMGTFY tag line is &#8220;<span class=\"st\">For all those people who find it more convenient to bother <strong>you<\/strong> with their question rather than <strong>google<\/strong> it for themselves.<\/span>&#8220;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I really like helping people out on twitter, forums, and over email (to a point) &#8211; but I get really terse really quickly if someone sends me a question for which the answer is in BOL or shows up near the top of a simple Google search (e.g. a recent email I got was &#8220;where can I get a description of the what the input parameters to sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats are?&#8221;). You&#8217;ll know if you&#8217;ve offended if my reply just contains a URL.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: small;\">Bottom line: Don&#8217;t waste everyone&#8217;s time, including your own. <strong>R<\/strong>ead <strong>T<\/strong>he <strong>F<\/strong>-ing <strong>M<\/strong>anual. Search online. Do some due diligence. And then feel free to ask all the questions you want &#8211; we&#8217;d all love to help you. But only after you&#8217;ve invested a little time trying to help yourself first.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are several reasons why I&#8217;ve drastically cut back on the amount of time I spend in the various online SQL Server forums, including: People continuing to argue that the advice given to them is wrong (and I mean arguing even after me giving references suppporting the advice and explaining why my advice is correct) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career","category-community"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>RTFM. No seriously, R.T.F.M. 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