Cisco Systems Brad Reese?

This guy just posts links from cisco, what gives? spammer?

I think we all know about cisco.com, and how to navigate a website ..

the whole point of asking questions in a newsgroup is that we come here
for some real world answers..from real people,.


c

christian koch wrote:

Brad's posts are not in my experience the usual newsgroup
fare and there appears to be some commercial interest
in them.

However:-

I think that this group would be a worst place without them.

Quite a number of the posts show a great insight
and often he posts links to documents that
I certainly may well not have found.

That's my view anyway.

Bod43@hotmail.co.uk wrote:


I agree definitevely

Alex.

In my opinion, he is not a spammer. I am aware, though, that
other people have other definitions of 'spammer'.



That may be the "whole point" to -you- but as best I can tell, it
is not the whole point to many other people.

cisco.com is huge, and even with concerted effort it can be hard
to find the information one is looking for, especially if one is working
by concept without knowing Cisco's name for what one wishes to do.

Brad has had exposure to a wide range of Cisco operations, and can
often link from a concept to a document that describes Cisco's version
of it or Cisco's configuration steps for it.

Brad does not appear to himself be a technical specialist: rather, he
appears to be someone of "broader strokes", who knows enough to be
able to steer people towards specialists or documents that are likely
to be able to able to solve specific issues. Such people can have
an important role in real-world networking: if you don't already know
which technology to investigate, or which companies to deal with or
buy from, then who do you contact to get pointed in the right direction?
Sure, for -you- the answer is Usenet, but one only has to think
about all the companies that you never see posting here to realize that
there is a potentially huge market for knowing who to call.


Also, there are numerous occasions on which people do not make
that "concerted effort" to dig through all of cisco.com . People
are sometimes rushed; or are unable to find enough -concentrated- time
because the phone is always ringing; or are too inexperienced to
know what they are looking for; or just aren't good at search engine
methodology [*]; or have managed to overlook something; or have
gotten the wrong idea stuck in their head. And there are also people
who figure that it isn't worth their time to exert the effort because
all they have to do is post and someone else will do the research for
free [**]. [***]


[*] -- My spouse is a research librarian at a university, and spends
an amazing amount of time trying to find the best way to teach people
how to do effective online searches. It's a huge research field that
combines the technology itself (which is always changing) with
Learning Theory, Teaching Theory, and "Information Literacy", along
with other topics. Searching cisco.com may seem obvious to you, but
chances are that you could not clearly describe your search strategies.


[**] -- Yes, seriously. In some of the other newsgroups I frequent,
I have encountered people who have stated quite clearly that they
do not bother to try to find particular kinds of information, because
it's easier just to post a question and let someone else provide the
answer.


[***] -- When it comes to Usenet, there is a reason why some things are
call "Frequently Asked Questions" -- because even after a FAQ is posted
and referenced in roughly every fifth posting, people will continue to
ask the same questions over and over.  It isn't uncommon to have the
same question asked several times per day, clearly indicating that
people aren't even checked back through the last few postings to see if
their question was already answered.  These behaviours are difficult to
reconcile with your "real answers from real people" comment.

 thats cool then..

im new to the groups, and just thought he might be a spammer looking
for business

rock on br!

Walter Roberson wrote: