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Is it just me, or did Brian K. White say:
> with someone doing it. And I see no reason to beat up on him for this. It's 
> not hurting anything. It is helping actually, because in this case, more IS 
> better. More copies of given info, or more interpreteations or more 
> representations of it, is always good. 5 people could say essentially the 

I'm not beating him up for it, per se.  I attempted to politely explain why
I really don't like it.  If 300 people simply start referencing one URL,
the social dynamic changes and people stop sharing more than the bare
essentials.  Sometimes it's the extras that aren't in print anywhere that
give people new ideas, etc.

And if it were to be distilled to the point of being able to reference
everything by link, well we could all answer probably 90% of the questions
in any subject with "google" or "wiki" quite succinctly, but it's still a
cop-out, and it still diminishes the quality of communication on the whole,
IMHO.  Those tools are there for so many things, but people still need a
bit more sometimes.  Even when they don't know it.

My whole point, taking any possible motive (good, bad, or indifferent) out
of the equation, is that if someone -wanted- to check a reference site,
they'd have checked the reference site already.  They didn't--they asked
instead, even though the information was readily available at the reference
site.  There's something really snobbish in the degree some people take
referring to specific resources offhand to almost every question.  I guess
you'd have to have experienced it firsthand, and maybe you haven't.  I've
literally seen people answer 10 questions in a row with "google", or answer
every question in an evening with "thottbot".  People that persist in doing
such things are obviously missing part of the bigger picture of active
communication vs passive communication.

Again...if I wanted to check the dictionary, I'd have picked up the book in
front of me, not turned my head and asked the person next to me.  In that
regard, it's not exactly giving people what they're after, entirely, to
my way of thinking.  I have printed documentation for things that covers
options in tremendous depth.  I can't just refer someone to my docs when
someone asks me a question--I have to give an answer because either 1)
they don't want to read the docs [why do you think places stopped shipping
manuals--like Windows 3.1 being the last version that had a printed book?],
2) they don't understand the docs, or 3) they want more than the docs
offer, which, given the completeness of my docs, means they want a more
in-depth sort of hand-holding until they "get" what is clearly on the
printed screen or page.  If more wasn't required, we wouldn't have lists
like this.  I'm not saying sites/docs are obsolete, I'm saying there are
valid reasons people want (and perhaps deserve) more, with a personal
touch.

mark->