I remember when I was in University and Medical school I used to annotate my textbooks comprehensively. I had different colors of highlighters that would denote the level of importance of the content being highlighted and I had several color pens for making different types of notes. One of my pens was a red pen, and I used this for making comments along the line of WTF does this mean?

There were thousands of times I’d read something in a textbook where the concepts weren’t communicated clearly enough for me to understand. I always hoped that if I read the book a second or third time that I would end up understanding the ideas that were highlighted with my red pen. Sometimes I did end up understanding what wasn’t understood before by reading the book several times, but there were many times where I wished I could have communicated directly with the author to find out what he was trying to say.

I have the same problems now when reading the technical information on the www.microsoft.com Web site. Often the author will leave out key concepts and ideas and I make a mental red pen WTF note of what I didn’t understand. But like with the textbooks in college, I can’t communicate with the authors of the Microsoft documents to find out what they were thinking and trying to communicate.

Because of these experiences, I always include a discussion link in my articles on the ISAserver.org Web site. While I’d like to think that I write so well that everything I ever write to so exceedingly clear that no one would ever had any questions, I haven’t quite deluded myself yet that might be the case

What I don’t understand is why more of you aren’t asking questions about the article I write! I see that the articles get lots of votes, and sometimes that rating isn’t very high. I assume that the ratings aren’t always 5 because I haven’t communicated something well enough. If that’s the case, then ask me a question on the discussion link! I will be automatically informed of your question post and I’ll answer you within 24 hours.

Now, how many Web sites give you that level of support? None except for ISAserver.org!

HTH,

Tom

Thomas W Shinder, M.D.
Site: www.isaserver.org
Blog: http://blogs.isaserver.org/shinder/
Book: http://tinyurl.com/3xqb7
Email: tshinder@isaserver.org
MVP — Microsoft Firewalls (ISA)