quote:Original post by haro
I would definitely not be against an auto-generated message which would provide links to any pages in the wiki with index entries which match words in the original post. This would be non-intrusive and non-offensive, offer a useful service and avoid the "look it up" mentality of replies, while still making definite utility of the wiki.

This would be great:

quote:
WikiScan recommends checking out the following links for additional information: normals, plane equations, point vector plane representation, hyperplane, dot product

Maybe this is the way to go instead of what I proposed.

quote:Original post by irbrian
The comments have been made in this thread that having a Wiki might perpetuate the typical click here answer that is so impersonal and frustrating to someone who has a serious question.

The quality of the answer you get is directly dependent on the amount of interest your question raises. If you ask yet-another cookie-cutter question, you''ll get the usual canned answer.
Having a ready wiki link actually increases the chances you''ll get a complete and detailed answer: there are many questions I don''t even bother answering anymore out of sheer boredom.

If you want a personal answer, it''s up to you to make your question challenging. Ideally, I should learn something by researching your question.

quote:It was directed toward moderators only because as you know I think that moderators ought to set the example, not because they have some responsibility to provide canned feedback.

Mods are volunteers, just like all of us other "veterans" who spend time answering questions. Turn our tasks into chores, and we''ll just go away.


“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.” — Brian W. Kernighan