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Comment by tinsmith | Hacker News Reader

"If you have to ask, you shouldn't be doing it," said the tired old King of Gatekeeping.

For a second, I thought I was on Stackoverflow. If you aren't starting by asking questions about the possibilities or limitations of a system you're about to work in, then you aren't starting properly.

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That adage exists because those who really want to do it won't be asking to be spoonfed and will instead start doing the research themselves.

For perspective, some may perceive doing research as being spoon-fed. Sometimes, you don't know where to start and need a hand. At one point, I didn't know how to turn on a computer, and now I'm a software engineer.

The area of 'i barely know how to keep a server running' is a problem for everyone else on the internet as your mail server starts relaying a deluge spam and phishing emails

I get why it exists, but we also have to be honest with ourselves and admit that there is a massive problem in communicating without assumption of prior knowledge/experience. The tech world is particularly guilty of this, with veterans having forgotten that there was a time when they didn't know what they know, and lacking any patience to adequately help those seeking understanding. To add to the issue, the Internet proper is so noisy with partial or broken information that the task of finding the correct information is far more daunting than it was 20 years ago when I started learning.

We need to give newcomers a break and answer their questions well, and discuss to promote understanding, instead of swatting at them with our canes. The only way knowledge passes to the next generation of thinkers and tinkers is if we fuel that curiousity.

Running an email server, that is secure, is not easy. In the mean time, before you're qualified and know what you're doing, your mail server is a danger to others. From being an open relay through just plain unpatched security vulnerabilities. It's not the consequences for you, it's the consequences your fuckups have for everyone else.

There's plenty of other tech they can screw with.

Asking the question in an open forum is doing the research on it.

I've wanted to do this for a long time, and am using this very HN post as a source of information. I don't expect anyone to set it up for me, but I am hoping to identify the "gotchas" that are likely not discoverable by reading man pages.

Except Google and StackOverflow exist now. You start by searching and reading tutorials, not by asking other people.

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