#mainframe security

When you (I mean you as a technical user, out there trying to figure new stuff out day in, day out) finally break down and go to the forums to seek an answer (always as a last resort), you expect to get some flack.   That’s the unfortunate way forums work.  You expect at least 1 of each:

- Person who asks you “Why would you want to do that anyway?  I just use XYZ tool instead”

- Person who links to or copies verbatim the manual you’ve already read.  (Possibly helpfully telling you to just RTFM you lazy bastard)

- Mocking jackass who adds zero value.

- A helpful answer and some useful discourse.

- Some combination of the above.

To be fair, I know there are loads of #lazyweb folks that need some/all of the above advice and are counting on others to do their work for them.

But, there are certainly cases (stackoverflow.com is full of them) where someone has a specific question, “how does this work”  or  “I found this instruction in some code I’m examining and I don’t understand it”, who wants to have a thorough conversation with examples and such.   

Most of the types of responses I find when searching mainframe forums fall under the category of #1 or #3 above.  Given the scarcity of these forums to begin with; it’s not hard to see why the boundaries for entry to this obscure platform are so high.

I give you today’s case-in-point; see the mod and global mod comments.  I found this site, looking for exactly the same info the OP/2nd poster was asking about.  The first reply is verbatim from the manual.

http://ibmmainframes.com/about49482.html