W’s blag

It’s not our problem that…

• you have a deadline and need help now. Help comes when those that can provide it want to, and mentioning deadlines, how urgent your question is, or similar, will only lessen the chance of getting timely help.
• your professor gives you an assignment limiting what tools you can use to solve it. Don’t be upset when we recommend what you aren’t allowed to use. Chances are your professor wants you to think for yourself anyway; ask him, or your fellow students, for help instead. Unless the constraints of the problem are really interesting, no one on irc is going to help you solve it in an unrealistic way.
• your boss or client thinks there is something wrong with the correct way to do things. We can help you with arguments you can use to convince your boss or client, but don’t push for alternate solutions. It’s your job to guide him to the correct solution, not to blindly give him what he says he wants.
• you use sucky software X. We’ll suggest sane solutions, not hacks to work around deficiencies in obsolete products.
• you don’t want to redesign your system from the bottom up, doing it the right way this time. You shouldn’t add features to a broken system.
• the proper IRC channel where your question is on topic is dead or empty. No, we don’t know where you should go for help. Search the web or something, find a mailing list or a forum if an active IRC channel does not exist.