Good idea. Let us also apply some pressure to those who
ask strangers for help and then complain when they receive it.
People tend to be much more candid on the net than they would be in
person. That's just the way it is. There is no reason to read a
specific-to-you insult into it.
The late Ken Keyes put it this way:
"You add suffering to the world just as much when you take offense as
when you give offense."
On the other hand, I think several answerers routinely take a rather
sadistic joy is putting down newbies and questioners, playing a sort
of "Mother May I" game to humiliate them into begging in precisely the
correct form, then giving them only a crumb.
This whole compression thing with Chris smells of such a tease because
nobody appeared to even know of a potential algorithm.
I think it quite reasonable to request someone produce an SSCCE to
help diagnose a problem, but it is not OK to chastise someone new to
the group for not already having done so.
Imagine a Monty Pythonesque sketch along these lines:
customer: I would like a beer?
barkeep: would that be a chilled or room temperature?
customer: chilled
barkeep: you stupid sod. Wrong answer. Nobody whose anyone drinks
chilled beer. Where do you think you are, Texas?
customer: ok, room temperature.
barkeep: that's better. What brand?
customer: Rickard's Red?
barkeep: don't have it.
customer: Guinness, surely you have a Guinness ale.
barkeep: nope. Try again.
.... etc. etc.
customer: what would you recommend?
barkeep: It depends. What's your astrological sign?
.... etc. etc.
barkeep: what a silly twit you are! We don't have a liquor licence.
You should have read the fine print on the back of the napkins. We
don't serve any kind of alcohol here, you stupid, naive, newbie,
drunken lout. What do you think this is, a pub? Get out before I call
the Raging Grannies.
(not to be taken too literally)
