RE: Re: Asking questions [Was: hello] -

Well put Bruce.

And I, too, get a chuckle at some of the answers Chris and Paul give to some of these guys.

I can see both sides here as while Chris may come off rude to some, I see why he is frustrated. I, personally, feel that it's getting a little old being spammed to death with e-mails titled "hi" or "hello", and the poster asks a question (If it even IS a question seeing as they use no capitalization nor punctuation). And if you're going to ask a question PLEASE title the e-mail respectively. If they ever DO contain some useful information, I'd have a hard time referencing it later. "Wait, that guy had a really good idea, I think it was in that 'hi' e-mail. oh wait, was it in the 'hello' e-mail?... oh no, maybe it was in the 'Introduction' e-mail?"

Plus, I believe there's a requirement to post our Name/Position/Company/Location on top of all that.

I wish they'd show the group here the common courtesy to at least be professional when posing a question to the group. I get all these sent to my work e-mail. Sure, I filter them to a subfolder and archive then delete them myself periodically, but I sure don't want my boss seeing my inbox full of e-mails with "hi", "hello", "Re:hi", "Re:hello", makes it look like I'm abusing my e-mail priviledges.

And I'm also of the school of thought where the only stupid questions are the ones not asked, but however "How do I design a pipe?" is a level of question where you can get the most basic of information from your nearest engineer. No need to spam 1500 people when you can waltz over to an engineer's desk and get a Cameron Hydraulic Data book or a Piping Guide, or even go to Wikipedia for that matter. Paul even links it off his site. Google "Pipe Design" for crying out loud.

I'm only two years into this field (at least the physical aspects of piping anyway) and I'm sure I've asked a hundred "dumb" questions, and I've gotten back many wisecracks, I take it in stride and learn.

But some of these e-mails seem like the poster's boss just sat in his rotating chair, put on a blindfold, spun himself around with his finger pointed out and goes, "and our new piping engineer iiiiiiisssss...." And the end result is an e-mail to OUR group with "How do you design a pipe?"

I can see Chris and Paul's frustration.

Sorry for my rant, but I have to agree, this is getting pretty old, pretty quick.

Michael Roble

Piping Department

Continental Design & Management Group

Pittsburgh, PA

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Received on Sat Jan 12 14:33:00 2008