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dizwell · Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 12:05 am Posts: 61

OK, I think this is an interesting point, so I hope you'll bear with me.

Firstly, you emphatically did say that there was something wrong with Bind: "Bind is way over the top for what you are trying to do, and causes the complication you are running into" (My emphasis. But it remains your statement that Bind is causing trouble).

Secondly, if someone asked for help in hammering a screw, and assuming I'd developed some expertise on the subject, I'd definitely offer help in hammering techniques, even offering to show the questioner how to hold a hammer if need be. That is, after all, what he asked about. I'd probably check how long he'd been a member of the Screw Hammering Forum first, just to make sure he wasn't a total newbie and hadn't mistaken us for the Nail Screwing Forum. But once I'd checked he'd been a member since 2005, and once I'd seen that his question indicated a certain degree of DIY skill, I wouldn't presume to know more about his needs than he's already told me in his own formulation of his own question.

Back to the world of software which I know best. I used to answer a lot of queries about Oracle on forums. Someone would write up and say, "I'm trying to extract data from a database to give to an external auditor and the export tool is giving me grief in the following ways...". You could almost guarantee that two regular "helpers" on the relevant forum would reply "you shouldn't be using exp because it's been deprecated by Oracle in favour of expdp. Switch to using that." And that would be their entire contribution to building an "answer" for the poor schmuck needing help.

But if one were to approach the subject rather less dogmatically, you'd perhaps find out that the guy is trying to follow an ISO 9001 standard for his quality-assured company in which it is mandated that exp be used.

What's more, deprecated or not, exp is still supplied by Oracle Corporation and does still work in 99% of circumstances, so if it's falling over for the guy, there's probably an explanation for that which could be arrived at by a bit of detective work; and then a workaround or a fix could be proposed.

So, the guy's question is completely valid and needs answering, and can be answered, on its own terms. I might do that, with lots of exp-specific technical detail, and end by saying in passing, 'incidentally, exp has been deprecated and you might want to get that ISO9001 standard updated to reflect that', but I wouldn't make my (frankly presumptuous) statements about how he ought to re-organise his employer's business the centrepiece of my forum answer to him.

Now, back to my real situation. With 20:20 hindsight, we now know that my problem was merely an issue with a new encryption feature of Bind that was introduced in version 9.6. That is not mystic knowledge of an unattainably-esoteric nature. I wasn't, in other words, asking for the moon. It was a valid question; it had a technical answer (more than one, I suspect, since the real fix for me should be not to disable DNSSEC but understand about key generation). Bind's suitability for what you, or anyone else, presumes to be my needs shouldn't have come into it.

Now, you make a point at the end which is a valid one: this may not be a suitable forum for soliciting help about Bind. Or, putting it another way, the regulars here may not know much about Bind. Which is fine, because we're definitely not all experts on everything. And a gentle "I think you'll get better answers in forumX, siteY or mailing list Z" would have been a perfectly valid answer from anyone as a result.

But, of course, instead of pointing me to useful sources of expertise, you simply told me to give up and use a completely different tool instead, which isn't quite the same thing.

tldr; Deal with the world as it is and the questions as they are, not as you wish they'd been written. Don't offer your own opinions instead of technical fact when technical facts are available. Personal opinions can embellish a technical answer, but not act as a substitute for one. And as a moderator here, I think you have a bigger responsibility than most to do that, actually.

nelz · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 10:38 pm Post subject:

dizwell · Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 12:05 am Posts: 61

Dutch_Master · LXF regular Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:49 am Posts: 2358

Gentlemen,

Shall we stop this right now, before things get really out of hand? May I also suggest the two of you, if opportunity arises, have a pint to discuss this in private perhaps?

(yes, I know I'm playing with fire here: moderating the Supreme Moderator Wink

)

dizwell · Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 12:05 am Posts: 61

Fair enough. I don't know why you'd think it was in danger of getting out of hand, though. I don't sense hostility from Nelz; there's certainly none from me. I don't sense things ratcheting out of the 'civilised discourse' level, either.

Call it an honest difference of opinion, then.

It remains an objective fact, however, that as the guy who actually needed the assistance, I didn't get any from Nelz's original replies. Whether that counts as a valid observation, from which wider lessons might be drawn for a more constructive way of responding to future threads by different posters... well, I'm happy to let others decide.

Over and out!