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February 2nd 04, 11:54 AM

In article , writes:

N2EY wrote:

Yep. But there's also the aspect of "self-training", where the person with
the
question tries to find the information on their own *before* asking.

For that I definitely blame the Internet.

In days gone by when one had to go to the library for information, two
things were different:

1) The world in general wasn't made aware of your ignorance.

2) By having to go through a book you usually picked up some other pieces
of information.

Agree on both counts!

In today's age, the Internet is touted as the grand source of all
information with instant response.

Hence the huge number of really ignorant questions on USENET and mailing
lists that show the questioner has obviously never bothered to read a book
or manual because anything you want to know can be found through the
Internet just by asking.

And here I thought it was just me getting ornery!

What's even worse is these people don't bother to do a search of archives or
FAQs to see if the question has already been asked, which it generally has.

EXACTLY!

I first noticed this on rec.radio.amateur.antenna. Despite lots of websites
dealing with the G5RV and T2FD antennas, it seemed that about every other
thread was about either one or the other of those two. Worse, the *same*
questions would be asked over and over.

This mode of operation is by no means limited to amateur radio; it appears
to an epidemic of major proportions.

Agreed.

Unfortunately, I can think of no solution to the problem in general, nor
one specific to amateur radio other than to just accept the situation for
what it is and get on with life.

On the one hand, folks like me *want* to Elmer the newcomers, but on the other,
we don't want to spend all our time answering the same questions over and over
and simultaneously reinforcing the behavior of "learned helplessness" where the
person doesn't even *try* to figure out or research the answer.

One thing I've done is to respond more to questions where it's obvious that the

person has at least tried to find the answer themselves, and is now stumped on
a particular point. Another approach is to answer in URLs.

73 de Jim, N2EY

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