Re: Title page for book latex export

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Jeff Horn <jrhorn424@gmail.com> wrote:


> Reading the list for a short while before posting, it became fairly
> obvious to me what was expected in order to receive help. But, since
> posting a rant to the mail list only informs people who read the list
> of your displeasure, and given that the group most likely to benefit
> from your advice are new list members, it might behoove us to post a
> clear(er) list of expectations on the org-mode site when we introduce
> potential users to the list.
> 

You are right that only the current members get to see the rant. I can
save it and repost it at appropriate times in the future.
Just kidding.

There is a fairly clear list of expectations in section 1.4, Feedback,
of the Org manual. And the "How to contribute" page on Worg
(http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contribute.php) contains the admonition:

...  
o you can submit bug reports – Before sending a bug report, make
sure you have read this section of Org's manual: Feedback
...

Perhaps people asking questions don't think of them as bug reports, but
they are: if one cannot find a way to do something, it's a bug: it may
be a code bug or a documentation bug - or it may be a user bug.  But to
figure out which it is, we need information: relevant information to be
sure, but complete information as well - as complete as possible.

There are also many, many guides on the web on how to ask questions
(e.g. http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html). But when push
comes to shove, all of that seems to go out the window - at least
sometimes. The point is that all of us have asked questions badly and
all of us will do it again, no matter what.

I overdid the rant (and didn't put any smilies in there), so it came
across too harsh, which was not my intention, but apart from that, an
occasional rant on the list can serve as a useful reminder about these
expectations.

But if you have ideas on how to make us all ask smarter questions, I for
one, am all ears.

Nick

PS. BTW, my favorite example of a "minimal example" was something that
Bernt Hansen posted a little more than a year ago: an obscure bug that
had plagued Org for a while and that was very tricky to reproduce.
Bernt came up with a method that involved a minimal .emacs and an .org
file and more than a dozen steps - but it was a consistent reproducer of
the bug and Carsten had it fixed in no time: a textbook case of an
exemplary bug report and an ideal to aspire to!

See the thread starting at

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/16970