>Here's an actual newsgroup article from yesterday which
>illustrates this attitude all too well:
>
> From: mattsc@sprintmail.com (Matt Chiglinsky)
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
> Subject: Re: program can't read its own data files
> Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 22:38:07 GMT
> Message-ID: <34e2d62c.39616104@nntp.a001.sprintmail.com>
>
> How am I given any guarantee that the FAQ will have the
> answer I'm looking for? What if I just waste my time
> looking through it? I'm almost always sure to get a
> response from a benevolent human who happens to be skimming
> through the group.
>
>Fortunately, this is an extreme example (the worst I've seen, in
>fact), but this kind of selfishness is unfortunately out there,
>and if you ask it, "But what if everyone acted that way", it will
>just come back with Yossarian's retort: "Then I'd certainly be a
>fool not to."
Actually, I don't think Yossarian's retort applies here. Presumably this guy is also unwilling to "waste his time" reading the newsgroup, so he expects to have the answer to his question e-mailed to him. If everyone behaved that way, newsgroups would consist of nothing but questions -- mostly the same questions over and over, because no one would ever see the answer except the person who asked it. No one in their right mind would read such a worthless newsgroup, so universal adoption of this behavior would lead to the end of Usenet as we know it. (Film at 11.)