A little thing occured to me the other day.  I was being asked of a user
to help him/her (the user will remain anonymous) produce a "wall" command
or a shell script that would preform the same thing "wall" does.
(for those of you who don't know, wall is the system broadcast command)
        Now, it's not that I probably couldn't sit down and REALLY think
over this, because i'm sure their might be a way to actually
replicate it.  The thing is, why would that user need access to it?
        I asked the user why on Earth he would have such a need for it,
and he (whups, I noticed I mentioned it's a he..oh well, i'm still going
to try not to mention any names, apologees) (anyway) responded "cuz
it would be cool, you could like say hi to everyone when you logon,
and warn people of users and stuff!"  Now, those are pretty nice things,
actually, BUT to be honest, if I was in vi or pico or in mail or something
and all of a sudden I got a message from a stranger or a person who
I don't know so well informing me of something I don't really need
to know, I would find it TERRIBLY irrating.  I thought about that
and just answered any questions he had rather dumbly and not with too much 
help to them.   
        What I'm beating around the bush to say is, what if you get a 
question that you feel shouldn't be answered.  Any possible situation
is possible, such as if the  question can be against your morals to
answer, security of the system, scenerios like the above, ways
to 'mess up people', etc.  What is to be said about them?  
        This isn't the first time I've gotten into this kind of situation.
I've gotten help seekers asking how to mail-bomb people, how
to pipe in non-tty input into write, unshadow passwd files, make
"party bombs".  You have to realize that their COULD be a more "peaceful"
reasoning to some of these.  (ie unshadowing passwd files could
be some root on another site who is curious how he can protect
his system better)  and I'm sure if I sat down, I could think of a good
reason for all of any bad question I might get.
        Back to the deal at hand.  What should I (a helper) do?
How should (or shouldn't I at all?) answer a question that I feel has
no real purpose being asked, on the grounds of it might damage something
or someone.
(note - some of these, and other questions were asked upon me in party also)

5 responses total.

I haven't gotten any questions quite that bad,
I've had a few milder variants, i.e. "How do I compile
my own IRC server?" or "How do I set up my own MUD
on Grex?"

In those cases, I explain to the user why we don't want
these things on the system, and that I won't help them
do that sort of thing.

As for the "wall" command, the potential for abuse far
outweighs the good uses, IMHO.  I'd tell them, nicely,
to sod off.

As a somewhat unix-challenged helper, I refer them to "help" ;-> (Unless
its an established non-practice.)

If I don't think somebody should be able to do something, I usually have a
reason for that.  If somebody asks me something I don't feel is a safe
question to answer, I explain to them why it isn't a good thing, and then
give them a bit of an explanation of the trust a volunteer run open system
like Grex needs to operate well.  No matter how closed mouthed helpers are
about telling people how to do destructive things, the people may be able
to find out somewhere else.  That's why it's also good to talk them out of
wanting to do it.

I'd explain why i think it's not appropriate, and not tell them howto do
whatever they want to do.

In this case, I would tell them it is not possible.
(Requires non-tty input for write or permitted ttys)

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