How to get people use forums and mailing lists [was Re: Career Help Urgent!]

On 5/17/06, Smylers <[email protected]> wrote:
> > This is for my carrer. Please.........
>
> The problem is obvoiusly an artificial one, and sounds like homework,
> but if this is for your career then I guess it's actually a test set by
> a potential Perl employer, who want to check that you can have the skill
> to do this exercise before offering you a job.

Being able to go to the *right* forum and get help is a huge skil.

>
> So anybody who "helps" you by providing you with the answer is assisting
> you deceive the employer and get a job you are blatantly not qualified
> for.  That's downright dishonest.  Why on earth do you expect that
> somebody would want to "help" you in this way?
>
> Smylers

While I agree with you I would like to note that, unfortunately most
of the people
I see around would not know how to or would fear to ask a question on
a mailinig list.

This is a separate topic, but in my classes I noticed that a very
large proportion
of the students would not use any forum or mailing list to ask a question.
I guess this is somewhere in the 80-90% range of the students.
I am talking about engineers, QA people etc.

Usually I explain them about the forums and mailing lists but usually
I have a feeling
of lack of interest or lack of trust or similar.

What is your experience?
How do you introduce al these "tools" to get help?

Gabor