Chacham's Journal: Oracle: Chen Shapira muses about OTN forums

Chen Shapira, who was kind enough to point out the undocumented "NOENTITYESCAPING" in XMLElement, muses about the OTN forums.

A couple points stood out to me.

"Lots of forums are full of lazy idiots asking questions and slightly less lazy idiots giving very bad answers."

"I'm still a little scared before posting, rereading my post several times to make sure I'm not going to get flamed. I've been somewhat hurt by replies to my posts in the past, and I know it may happen again. I'll gladly pay this small price in exchange for the best support forums in the world."

And the best part

there are truly interesting threads there every day, and I learn a lot by reading them. Because if someone asks a question and I know the answer, I enjoy helping out a bit to a fellow DBA, knowing that I'll get help with my issues when I need it. Because sometimes I don't know the answer, but the topic is interesting, so I'm happy to do some reading and testing and find out the answer. Because if I get the answer wrong, often a top notch expert will correct me and I'll learn from that.

It's a nice post, and she expressed it well. I think it is worth the few minutes it takes to read.