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offshore
PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 12:52 pm    Post subject: Does it bother you that..... Reply with quote

Master

Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 222

many people on here ask "simple" questions, because it seems they're too lazy to open a manual?

Currently, I mostly work mainframe side software, MQ Series included. I browse/post on several MVS forums and I see the same thing there.

It seems to come from people from India, where most of the outsourcing ends up. My point is not to "India" bash post or a cry because US jobs are leaving <other countries are in the same situation> but it seems companies hire people for job because they may know "buzz-words" especially for MVS or applications programming, when in fact that person may never have written a piece of code or logged onto a mainframe in their life.

When I first started with MQ Series and even MVS System Programmining I didn't know a whole lot about either. Luckily, I have been blessed with those who I work with that are willing to help me and share with me knowledge they have acquired over the years.

I come from a Windows/Novell/AS400 background. But I opened a manual <and still do today> to get the information that I need <or at least try to get what I need>.

I browsed this forum for a while before I posted any messages. I even used the "search" function to find resolution to a problem and see if others have encountered the same issues. I've probably posted some dumb questions, but when you see questions like.."How do I create a DLQ on..." or "Why can't I get from a Remote Queue" or "What's the SIT" <System Initialization Table> for those of you who don't know CICS that I see on other MVS forums. I'm not saying that I'm a genius on MQ, but I feel I know a good amount and most of it is through hands on testing that I do and of course reading.

When I first started Administoring MQ I didn't care to know anything about the application side, but I found out that wasn't the case. So I started learning what I could about the programming part. I learned what the MQMD is for, how to understand the "code" and determine what is going on in the application.

I guess my point is sometimes you need to open a book. Most of the MQ information is the same across all platforms...espcially the MQSC commands.

Just my thought for the day........
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mqonnet
PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Grand Master

Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 1114
Location: Boston, Ma, Usa.

Agree with almost all that you said here. But there are a few that i wish to add.

-Everyone has to "start" at some stage or the other to reach a level of expertise in any subject. And if you do find posts from some people who dont know much about MQ that would obviously mean that they are in their learning stages. You might know "RTFM"(sorry to get this here. :)..) is not a popular phrase just with learner community but with almost all professionals. At times somebody threw this phrase even on me. :). Having said so doesnt mean i dont want to, but at times you feel its easier to ask someone than to research yourself. :).

-Not everyone gets the opportunity to work with a team that has people who are real gems in a particular subject. As you and most of us would agree that unless you have a good mentor you cannot really go anywhere. And not everybody gets one. Gotta be lucky. :). So for those who dont, imagine how hard would it be for them to "keep up their jobs". At the end of the day thats what counts, right. :).

-This issue of letting people ask to search through this forum has been raised several times. But as i mentioned here, its not always that people want to do that. Because they feel, its easier to ask a question which would get a direct attention of a person responding. Point to note here is, for us who have been visiting this forum for years, its obvious that there is a "search" button. But for somebody who has come here for the first time, they may not really know "how to", "where to" etc, even though all is pretty much evident. And thats why they feel comfortable in asking the question directly.

-Questions at times are silly, i know. I have posted and also asked many of them in my career. Manuals do help, but those manuals also help you when questions are real tough too, except for some situations where manuals are not clear and vague.

-As for jobs outsourcing, No comments.

Bottom line here is, this forum is open to everybody and welcomes questions of any type by anyone on MQ and its allies, of course. All the points you suggested are excellent ones and everybody should read and follow them. But there is a learning curve for everything and thats where people like us who have gained some expertise assist others.

I have been with MQ for a long while now. Still i say, i know some of it and not all of it. As nobody can know everything. :). Or at least i can't.

Huh, lot of philo talk. Sorry guys. :)

Good post and good suggestions. :)

Cheers
Kumar
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PeterPotkay
PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Poobah

Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722

I ask my fair share of questions I admit, but I give back what I can by answering what I can. And I see that you also answer questions as well, offshore (intersting topic for a post for someone with your Username!).

I got no problem with answering questions for someone who is brand new. What really annoys me are those who keep asking question after question, never taking the time to answer some other questions. Do a search by author on some of these, and you'll see you get 25 or more hits, and each and every thread is started by them. They never contribute.

The ratings on a member name go up the more you post, but there is no regard to whether you answered 100 questions, or asked 100 questions. It would be nice to have that factored in. If instead of Journymen, the rank was PainInTheAss, I could easily decide if an answer was warranted.

The fact is that odds are if someone asks basic questions over and over, in not so perfect english, and never posts any help to any other users, it is an "MQ Admin" making 15K a year. And should the company that decided to can the 75K a year admin care? No, and I don't blame them. The guy making 15K is getting the job done, because the the top 20 or 30 posters on this site are freely giving their time and expertise.

And the tone is turning here. More and more posters are not just freely answering the same question over and over. RTFM and UTFSB (Use The F*** Search Button) are getting to be more and more common. I have not used these responses yet, although I have thought them many times. I have choosen to ignore the question. But someone usually jumps in anyway, and the problem persists. A more tactful response I have been seeing is "What manuals did you look in? What search terms did you use?" This is kinda good as it forces the guy to actually do some research, and gives the hint to others that may have otherwise posted a quick answer that enough is enough.

On the flip side, I will always answer questions for the guy that posts nothing but questions, but the questions are well thought out, properly asked, and if they show an attempt at initial research. This leads to good discussion and further learning on my part I think.

Outsourcing. Ya know, I can't blame a company for hiring the guy for 25% of what the US worker makes. If they get the job done, its fair competetion I say. Although the loss of tax revenue is inexcusable. Plus that 15K will not be spent on goods or services in the US. I got no problem with an MQ admin making 15K a year, if they pay taxes in the US, and spend that 15K in the US, if they were hired by a US company.

BUT, it is idiotic is for people to complain that a job is lost, and then turn around and explain how to spell MQ to the same person that took that job!
And this is very relevant to the topic of this post, because the people that are abusing this forum are more often than not outsourced workers, would you not agree?

What are you going to do? I know this forum wouldn't exist without questions. But it also will not exist if you take away the top 20 posters, who are either tired of answering the same questions over and over, or are no longer employeed/interested in an MQ capacaity because their job is gone, maybe in small part due to the fact that they answered the same questions, over and over.

Consider the following when you are abouit to post an answer to a question written by some one who you suspect is an outsourced worker: Your answer makes them seem a better deal at 15K, and you a worse deal at whatever you make, to the next company considering where to hire an MQ expert from.

Posters abusing this forum as offshore pointed out, and outsourcing, are invariably intertwined, in 99% of the cases.
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Last edited by PeterPotkay on Fri Mar 05, 2004 9:21 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Michael Dag
PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jedi Knight

Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 2607
Location: The Netherlands (Amsterdam)

my 2 cents...

no question is stupid! Question is... whether you should ask it here or to yourself first

I read almost all posts, just for my own learning as I am not involved in all cases...
Where I know the answer AND have the feeling the person asking the question has followed the obvious route above I will answer.
That's just how I feel today, I spend my time here and invest in myself so I feel I have the right to answer or not.

With regard to outsourcing to let's say low labor cost countries, it's a sign of the times and happened to other industries before, on the other hand if I read the 'brochures' of those companies (ISO xxxx, CMM level 5 certified whatever) and then find here questions from people trying to pass a test without knowing what they are even talking about...
I do have my doubts.

In the end your only continuous meal ticket is to able to teach yourself new stuff, this takes a little talent and a lot of work and investment in yourself.

Complaining and trying to get bans on outsourcing and calls for 'national' action are not going to help, just rely on your own ability to be smarter then the rest and create your own new 'thing' ...

Always liked Darwins theories...

ok time to get off my soapbox and start reading again...

After thought... I liked the question/answer balance reflection in the user level
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jefflowrey
PostPosted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 6:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Grand Poobah

Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 19981

As someone who does tend to post "RTFM", or "Please use the search function" a lot, I'd like to comment.

I don't do this because I think a question is stupid, or the poster is stupid for asking the question.

I ask people to read the manuals or use the search function because I believe that it's a better approach to solving problems. Particularly for someone who is new to MQSeries (or really any technology), it's important to be able to use the documentation. It's also, in my opinion, always going to be faster to at least START with the manuals - almost everyone has a local copy of the manuals somewhere(even if only on the documentation CD, uninstalled).

Granted, there are some things that are very useful to know that are somewhat obscure in the manuals, or broken up and spread across several topics or manuals. But if it takes longer to read the manuals and answer a question yourself than it might if you posted and someone responded within a few minutes... There's still the added benefit of having read the manuals. You'll get exposed to material that you don't need immediately, but later you'll go "Aha! I saw something about that the other day!". This is the main reason I read and post here - because it exposes me to things that I might not need to know immediately, but could be a huge time saver later on.

In addition, there is a long standing tradition in Usenet and other Internet based forums where "newbies" are expected to lurk for a while to get an idea of the ethics and standards of the forum.

I don't really have any comments on outsourcing. It's a sticky issue from both sides...

But I do agree with
MichaelDag wrote:

In the end your only continuous meal ticket is to able to teach yourself new stuff, this takes a little talent and a lot of work and investment in yourself.

And I also like the idea of adding some additional qualifications to the ratings here, so that they're closer to rankings than ratings.
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JasonE
PostPosted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Grand Master

Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 1220
Location: Hursley

Quote:
And I also like the idea of adding some additional qualifications to the ratings here, so that they're closer to rankings than ratings.

How about posts initiated vs reply posts?

Personally I answer questions because it might save me work later I also read most non-mqsi posts, as an interest factor, and have learnt things through doing that. As I have said before, I have been very impressed with the quality of some of the answers here, and am happy to repay the favour for things I can answer.

It is certainly frustrating when you get an extremely simple question which could have been looked up in the table of contents, let alone the index of the manuals. I dont think outsourcing is the cause either - far too often its easy to ask a question than do the effort of looking it up.
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bduncan
PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 1:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Padawan

Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful postings.
I see a political issue (outsourcing) as well as a courtesy issue (posters expecting us to do all the heavy lifting for them). Some people may consider them to have a cause and effect relationship. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't.
There are plenty of sites where the political problem is discussed in great detail, for instance http://www.yourjobisgoingtoindia.com has been getting some press coverage lately.
Note: I am not in any way saying I in any way support that site or agree with what people on it have to say.

That is why I'd like to limit the discussion here to the problem of posting etiquite (although I won't stop anyone from political discussions as long as it stays in the General Discussion forum).
I like the suggestions that we differentiate between people who ask, and people who answer questions.
If you look at a site like http://www.experts-exchange.com/ they do this very well. Of course they are using a pay-model, but we could accomplish the same sort of thing and keep the site free.
It would be interesting to find out if they wrote their own site, or if they are using some freely-distributable forum software like phpBB...
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Michael Dag
PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jedi Knight

Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 2607
Location: The Netherlands (Amsterdam)

Brandon,
interesting situation...
I did some research on phpBB.com and may have found some solutions, but first let's get the PROBLEM clear...

What we have here is a FREE board which is great and we want to keep it that way.
What we have here is a number of people willing to answer sincere questions 'cause they like to help and share knowledge AND learn in the same process (from the responses I can clearly see you and me are not alone)
What most of us don't want to be is someone's book reader or free lunch, hence the RTFM's or polite hints to the search button. On the other hand there are the 'good' guys aswell...

On this board there is a post count which ranks you, but you can get to 200 just asking and asking and asking...

What I think we need is a points system, each initiated post costs you say 10 points and every new joiner gets a 100 points so they can either search for the answer and save their points for the real questions if no answer is found.
The cost of 10 points goes to the one that ANSWERS the question, not the one that responds FIRST (otherwise you get a rush to post FIRST... and earn some points...)

To decide who ANSWERed the post we probably need some referee's...
but that is the next step.

What do you think about this points system?
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vennela
PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jedi Knight

Joined: 11 Aug 2002
Posts: 4055
Location: Hyderabad, India

I have been closely following the thread from its inception. By reading the thread, I get a feeling that we are dicouraging newbies to post questions.

Quote:
I like the suggestions that we differentiate between people who ask, and people who answer questions.


I am still debating on whether we still need to differentiate between these kinds. I like the way the site is. What if the user is running out of his first 100 points after asking the 10 questions. He can always use a different user name and start posting again. The upside of it is for the one who gets the points will accumulate the points (and what is he gonna do with those points anyway).

I think if somebody asks 200 questions (without answering any), by the time he asks the 200th question, his quality of question might improve and that might build on our search database.

Instead of working hard on this kind of system, we can improve the site in the following ways.
1. Compile the problems of same type and provide a generic solution that covers the solution to the problem 80% of the time. Like for example
Why doesn't my trigger application work by JeffLowrey.
2. Persuading, somehow, more IBMers to answer questions. For example in the workflow forum we haven't seen an IBMer (except clindsey who has been contributing invaluably though) for a while. Fortunately we see couple of them these days (mzg, dsbailey) but they are not as frequent visitors as JasonE or bob_buxton.
3. Encourage debates and multiple solutions to the same problem.


These are just my thoughts.
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PeterPotkay
PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Poobah

Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722

Any system that relies on human intervention is going to have 2 main problems I'm afraid. One is the work that the rankers are going to have to do. The bigger problem is people getting pissed off when 2 or 3 people answer a question and they all don't get points. Who gets the points then? What if the first answer is technically correct, but another person adds something very useful as well? What if the answer is just RTFM?


I think along with a "Total Posts" count, if you saw a "Threads Started" count versus a "Threads Participated In" count, it would give a good indication of what is going on.

Someone starts 20 threads, and post 5 followup questions in each one as part of the dialouge of solving the problem. Currently, we would see:
Total Posts = 100.
Looks pretty good for our curious-non-manual-reading-non-search-button-using friend.

In the new method, we would see:
Total Posts=100
Threads Started=10
Threads Participated In=10

Aha! His true colors show! Having a Show All Posts Button right under these figures (not on the profile page as it is currently, but on the post page) will easily give us a way to check if the posts in general that this person initiates are frivolous or occured after they did some research already.

And the automatic name rankings - get rid of them I say. Its silly that I have the same ranking as Jeff, Kirani or Mr.Linux. I still post a lot of questions you know. No way am I on the same level as these guys (and there are many other names as well besides the 3 I just mentioned - those just happened to be on my mind because of the posts I just read in other forums).

The elevation to true Master and then Grand Master (whatever happened to Jedi?) happens rarely enough that a moderator, or Sir Brandon himself, should reserve the right to bestow that great honor . Everyone else can live with the shame of a non-title . The numbers will speak for themselves.
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PeterPotkay
PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Poobah

Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722

Quote:

I think if somebody asks 200 questions (without answering any), by the time he asks the 200th question, his quality of question might improve and that might build on our search database.


If someone asks 200 questions and never gave an answer to anyone else, I don't care what the quality of his question is! The free ride should have been over a long time ago!



On the other hand.....

Has anyone ever used Google Answers? You post a question, and offer $$$ via PayPal to get the answer. Google employees then work to get the answer and then keep what you offer. Wouldn't that be neat if some of us could get paid for doing this?

I doubt that will ever happen, but I bet people would actually start reading those manuals first!

Anyway, if you can, go check out Google Answers. It is sometimes very interesting reading to see the wide range of questions people ask!
http://answers.google.com/answers/
Yeah, there are a few MQSeries questions:
http://answers.google.com/answers/search?q=MQSeries&qtype=all
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EddieA
PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2004 7:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jedi

Joined: 28 Jun 2001
Posts: 2453
Location: Los Angeles

One of the "problems" with trying to 'rate' people on the answers given, is the one's who add their '2 pence' (showing my heritage ) to a post that has already been answered.

Vennela said:
Quote:
Persuading, somehow, more IBMers to answer questions

I, personally, don't know about the WF forum, (because I have trouble spelling it ), but there are quite a few IBMers around. They just don't advertise the fact to "avoid" being an "official" voice.

Cheers,
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Michael Dag
PostPosted: Tue Mar 09, 2004 12:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jedi Knight

Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 2607
Location: The Netherlands (Amsterdam)

as always good comments!

maybe a points system goes too far, it was late last night and seemed like a good 'threshold'.

@Vennela, the intend was not: to discourage newbies, the intend was: to make them think/search themselves before posting

@Peter, fully agree someone who posts 200 questions and never answers any of the other questions... who cares about the quality of the question...!Titles? ahh true... I am not even certified in anything...

Let me share some of my own experience on another forum, recently bought a Shuttle XPC, there are some very good forums out there and started lurking (as usual) within a week found out the main problem of a Shuttle is the noise and the heat... and there are a 'thousand' solutions posted on how to fix it! I never asked any questions on solving noise or heat problems and found the answers by using the search button. Now after a month or so even I am bothered by those 'noise' and 'heat' posts!
I must say some of the solutions 'offered' were very creative:
want to get rid of the noise:
- send it to mars
- burry it in your garden
want to solve the heat problem:
- stick it in your refridgerator
- etc...
The result is I did not stick around and only go back when I hit a problem...

Maybe Brandon needs to replace the 'Post New Topic' button with the 'Search' button and 'hide' the 'New Topic' button a little better
That way newbies will have to use the 'Search' button to find the 'Post New' button'...
All we do is use 'Reply' anyway...
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bduncan
PostPosted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 2:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Padawan

Joined: 11 Apr 2001
Posts: 1554
Location: Silicon Valley

As Peter and others have mentioned, a point system is probably going to cause problems, not to mention someone (me?) would have to spend the time bestowing those points.

Certainly this topic deserves some more thought and perhaps we can make a few tweaks to the site to at least diminish the problem of the same question being asked for the 999th time, but I'm sure we'll never stamp it out completely.
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jefflowrey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Grand Poobah

Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 19981

Maybe a peer rating system could be done instead of a top-down points system.

More like the slashdot approach.

The OP can award points to answers for the topic they've started.

That will *at least* teach us RTFMers to be nice about it.
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