IBM Mainframe Forum

Admin -

Could we talk a little bit about the purpose of this forum? If I remember correctly, we created this site as an alternative to the professional site for those mainframers who are either students or just starting out. The intent was for this to be mostly open, non-judgemental, and to have very little moderator intervention. I recall that we talked about what this site would allow, and I seem to remember that it would be "anything goes": homework questions, interview questions, topics requesting code, topics requesting a review of code, and just about anything else. No specific expectations, no comments, no asking for money, no flaming or questioning the intent of the poster. Am I the only Moderator who treats this site using these guidelines?

Hi Kevin!
I would say that the issue is a bit murky!
if the forum is, as the title tells, A Help & Support Forum for Mainframe Beginners and Students
the everything goes might be acceptable, after an agreement on the beginner' s definition ( beginner vs.lack of skill )
but when the questions are asked for work related issues the above concern seems not applicable,
see for example ( the last ones I got into )
clist-rexx/topic5450.html
easytrieve/topic5454.html
they are clearly not beginner student related

I do not object in providing snippets for real work situations,
but I tend to do so only when there is an added training value
( mostly for REXX snippets where I tend to exploit little known facilities of the language )

I would object to provide code and guidance when the issues are due to
poor management, poor organization
complete general lack of skill
poor/inconsiderate requirements
tasks assigned to somebody without the proper skill
( unless we consider as beginners those without the proper skill)
( the TS might be a beginners, but should be trained on somebody' s else time )
in these cases I prefer to point out where the organization should be <improved>

cheers
enrico

Anything goes? I could not agree with that. When posters ignore the basic rules of the forum (like posting the same question 3 times), they ask questions that can hardly be identified as questions (poor wording, no information about the problem, so terse that it appears they are too lazy or do not take the time to describe the problem), or ask how a product works or basic knowledge about a product or had no courses about a product (what is CICS, how can I set up SMS), or ask questions expecting an answer for a theme that involves a week long projekt (an SMS environment), or have not done any research on their own (google or looked at a manual), or have not done a search in the forum - then why should I invest my time if they are not willing to invest theirs? We do not have to flame them, but we should point out their responsibilites. Then I often see that if they do not get the answer they want / expect they often flame us.

Firstly I completely agree with "Mr Spock". And secondly with Mongan. And, of course, with Enrico as well.

I've previously put a couple of things in this forum, trying to provoke this sort of conversation, because coming from the "outside" it was difficult to tell the purpose of the forum. Lots of kids getting busted to hell by professionals. Lots of kids leaving a gibberish message and never appearing again. Lots of kids with strange assignments.

Just for now, with the assignments, remember they're not necessarily "real". When I started as a trainee, there was no real work for us, but stuff made up for us by the guy responsible for our training. So, he gave us some of his "pet projects" to look at. Beyond us to go to completion, mostly, but something for us to do while they decided which group we would work with and maybe extending his information on his "pets" a little as well (mine, which was extending the account number check-digit was implemented three years later).

Did this topic just die?

Would it be possible to add a screen of text to the "new post" option which would illicit more information from the poster (if that is the right terminology) before they even get to ask the question?

If possible, it would be best (but perhaps too much work?) to have different text per forum. But even one general text could save a lot of hassle.

I understand that agreeing on a piece of text might be a bit of a nightmare, but almost anything might improve the quality of the questions (and even make some of the weirder ones never appear). And this isn't a democracy anyway. If there is someone with the power to do it, they can get a crack at putting in what they want. We get to moan about it once, they get to take notice of it or not. Not such a long process, neccesarily.

That sound like a good idea - something like a question mask - what was the error message, what was the environment (ISPF, TSO, CICS, DB2), etc. Some of the fields being required. Maybe it would stop some of these useless questions that require us to fire back questions asking to describe the problem: I have an error, can you give me an answer?

Yep, that's the sort of thing. Really, a bit like the "forum rules", but I suspect that 99% of new posters haven't read them. So, search to see if question already ask. Read ten popular threads so you can know how things go. KISS, but I think might help.