Doing it right

TNH on the right patron saint for the Internet:

Saint Isidore never had to be told to RTFM. As one who argues long and hard in a newsgroup, he fought against the errors of the Arian and Acephalic heresies. Like a sysop coping with an online world in which it’s always September, he strove to civilize and enlighten the incursive Goths, a barbarous people who held learning in contempt. Like a blogger, he concentrated not on producing independent works of his own, but on usefully directing his readers to the works of others and putting them into context, with many references and quotations along the way.

The whole essay is worth reading.