Well, in response to your question, I'd say that what first appeared to me to be question of bandwidth encompasses a little more than that. The Daynote's credo: "We do this so you don't have to", implies a few things. Daynoters are usually dancing at the edge of something new. Be it hardware (Bob and Jerry), software (Tom and Bo), operating systems (Brian), or paradigms (Bo's Wiki pages), the Daynotes Gang is often leading the charge for both the sysadmins and the hobbyists. Daynoters by definition have something to say, i.e., they pass along new information as they uncover it; and, as a matter of style, maintain an online log of their progress (or lack of) on their projects. As a bonus to the community, Daynoters often take it upon themselves to answer reader's questions and comment on reader's issues (often after stirring up those issues themselves). I see this as quite a boon to the readers and a benefit not to be abused. Limiting questions to the topic at hand or to the occasional tidbit is simple courtesy. Why not just ask any old question any old time? Well, let's start with both bandwidth and professionalism, then move on to some other concepts. A Daynoter has only twenty four hours in his day (well, Syroid seems to be an exception; everyone else sleeps sooner or later). During this time, they have to maintain their family, their job and their personal life. Daynotes time surely takes up all of their personal discretionary time and likely steals from the other two as well. A Daynoter is typically a professional in this line of work; that is, they are usually capable of making a wage off-line for the information they provide on-line. Simple courtesy dictates not over-stepping the bounds of community and becoming a leech. A Daynoter is a member of a community: "People of similar interests and perhaps like minds (better: dissimilar mindsets) congregate to share information, opinions and expertise." (ref: Pournelle:mail 8., last post). Entry and interaction within this community presupposes a certain amount of effort on everyone's part. Before I asked Bo to explain how his Wiki worked, I spent time with his references and learned something about both Wikis and Perl. Before Brian asked about local aliases in Apache, he set Apache up and gave it a good go (sorry Brian, I'm no further along in the Win32 environment; same problem. Maybe this weekend). While any Daynoter will likely answer anyone's questions, their response is likely to include either a book reference or a site reference related to the question (or someone else will chime in shortly). I believe it is then placed on the community member to attempt to take this starting point and proceed to learn the related material. Asking a Daynoter how to get to point "A" on a map will certainly get you the basic route as well as links to MapBlast or another resource. Calling up at every intersection and asking which way to go will soon lead to frustration on everyone's part. The Daynoter is not sitting at the reader's machine; all of its potential permutations are not evident to him. At some point you will either have to hack it yourself or take the machine to someone who can (and who will likely charge you for the service). Placing an undo burden on the time constraints of the Daynoter will likely result in a polite note to the effect, "due to the volume of mail received, only selected pieces of mail will receive a response and those responses will be posted online." Learning together seems to me part of the glue of the DayNotes Pages; having "a good time in good company" is certainly another portion. (ibid.) I like to think of the Daynotes Community as an environment that we all can use to learn in and to grow in.

Dan Bowman
October 1999