Unanswered messages

Nichael Lynn Cramer nichael at sover.net
Thu Mar 11 11:52:11 EST 1999


Jonathan Robie wrote:
>BigJonah at aol.com wrote:
>>We need an Beginning, Intermediate and Senior or Advanced b-greek. No one
>>wants to be embarrased. I wouldnt field 90% of questions I have. JRG
>
>When I started on B-Greek, I asked some pretty naive questions, but they
>never caused a problem. I also made some rather stupid assertions, which
>were always dealt with gracefully. When I look through the archives, I find
>I'm never embarassed by my questions, but I'm often embarassed by some of
>the assertions I made.
>
>So if you have a basic reading knowledge of Greek, I think fielding your
>questions here really is no problem - of course, if you can easily look up
>the answer to your question, at your current skill level, then perhaps you
>should do that.

Moreover,  there has always been something which one might describe as an
"apprentice" system at work on B-Greek.

That is, in parallel to the broad range of questions, there has developed a
range of "answerers"; i.e. MiddleGreeks answering questions from
LittleGreeks, LittleGreeks answering questions from LittlerGreeks and so
on.   Now, this may mean that a first semester question may not always be
answered by one of the MegaGreeks --although that might happen as well--
there's always a good chance that someone will jump in with a helpful answer.

All in all, this is one of the most congenial --and welcoming-- NG I've
ever had the pleasure to have hung out in. 

Now as Jonathan says, clearly if a question is of the "look-up" variety,
one should probably try to do that first.  Conversely, you shouldn't be too
surprised if a response consists of a pointer to a reference rather than a
specific, concrete answer.

But assuming that a question really has to do with B-Greek (e.g. nothing of
a overtly sectarian nature) the rule has generally been "no question too
small"  (or too large for that matter...)

Nichael
---
Nichael Cramer
nichael at sover.net                           nulla dies sine linea
http://www.sover.net/~nichael/



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