I don't have a problem either helping rookies or being patient with them. I do have a problem with people that have a gazillion titles after their name and they "ask" things like "how to backup send answer with detailed steps immediately". Those kinds of "questions" don't sit well with me or a lot of other people who won't speak up about it, especially since the "answer" is in bloody Books Online and they never even looked! Questions like that are arrogant and stupid especially when they "brag" about how much they think they know by calling themselves Sr. DBA or have a bunch of titles after their name.

Everyone wants folks like me to be patient and, lordy, we try. But we also put up with a huge amount of abuse, arrogant demands, and a whole bunch of other hooie including some of the most poorly formed questions and data descriptions in the world. Even when we ask for clarification, it almost seems that some people are bothered by the fact we asked for clarification.

Your article is well founded, Manie... I wish people would take the time to be kind to us frequent posters and to remember we don't get paid to take as much crap as we do...

Some of my favorites are lists of interview questions and homework questions... and they're usually in some forum post with "urgent" in the title. People actually expect us to do their bloody homework for them. The world is full of people with titles that don't deserve them... I'm not gonna help someone else get that way. Why don't I just ignore the post? Because there's a lot of people out there that don't understand that people doing homework have to try and that I don't want folks just to give these future bad DBA's the answers. Same thing with the interview questions.

Heh... then there's the "intelligent" ones that say things like "performance" doesn't matter and will argue for hours about it. The only reason why I continue in such a debate is because I don't want any newbies to think that performance doesn't matter. With very, very few exceptions, it almost always matters because someone will pick up on bad code and use it.

I wish someone would write and article about how to post a question... oh, wait a minute! I DID! 😉 And it's in my signature line and in the signature line of many of the heavy hitters. Do you think people take the time to read it even when we do point it out? Some do but most don't...

So yes... if you have intelligent questions, even if you're not sure exactly what to ask and you use just a little non-arrogant courtesy in a post, people will jump through hoops to help you. Take on the wrong attitude and it's pork chop time, boys and girls. :hehe: