On 2021-08-07 10:26 a.m., Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > I think that this person had difficulties in explaining themselves. That made > it annoying / frustrating to see no progress. We all threw in effort and it > didn't seem to be going very far. I'm not going to speculate whther that > difficulty was accidental / deliberate to wastte our time. > >> >> I feel that many person cherry pick one message, like the one I wrote >> and got out of context, talking about a Lynch mob. >> >> Often when someone ask for help, we'll answer back that there's >> information missing so we can answer properly. >> Example, the person say >> *I can't start X11* >> And we'll ask >> What version of Debian are you running ? >> What are the outputs ? Logs ? >> What's your graphic card / GPU ? >> etc... >> > > See also why I picked some elements from Greg's list / David's message to > put into the monthly FAQ messsage. It now has a section on how to ask > good questions and read the answers. Thanks, list, for reminding me and > making me amend the mail. > I've worked at tech support for many years, mostly on the 2nd level, that is doing follow up on problems reported by agent on the phone. And even if we selected agent with good educational background, it didn't do the job and we had questions that missed the most basic information to be answered, people saying what they expect and not what they tried or what they use, etc. This is something hard to get for many. And this not only apply to our lists here, most of us know what we don't want but have problem saying what we'd like. >> Why do we do so ? >> So our answer is relevant. >> >> Same rules apply when giving comment, if you want to have it relevant >> then look at the whole story. >> Or you'll only get a part and go off track. > > This has been a particularly frustrating thread and hard to follow in > general. > It's not straightforward to make this a useful list where people feel > welcome and able to raise issues. At the risk of sounding very "pink and > fluffy": many of the people who appear here are not familiar with mailing > lists at all. We need to look at everyone "with kind eyes" to some extent > unless they are abruptly hostile and to give people the benefit of the > doubt. > I always try to give explanation to others when their question seem hard to follow, or simply to use a good descriptive subject. This doesn't seem to be appreciated by some. Strangely, most of the time, the original poster will say thanks at one moment, the complaints seem to come from others who'd prefer only to ignore. > One way to deal with people being difficult is to report the issue to > the Community Team. Full disclosure: I'm part of the Community Team > as is Steve Mcintyre who pops up here occasionally. The team will > normally talk it over, decide what action to take and carry it out. > That can be just an email off list to the person being difficult, > a recommendation to block someone to go to the listmasters - anything > seen as appropriate. > Thanks for you work. I've reported to Google (probably useless) the user who posted a Passport on a Google Drive link. > Another way - which is quicker and easier in some ways - is to choose to > ignore them for the sake of your own peace of mind. Not every post has > to be replied to. Not everything demands a response about the character > of the poster: even if it does, waiting a couple of hours to reply may > always be a good idea. Others may post in the meantime and you may find > that you no longer lead to post. > > All the very best to all, as ever, > > Andy Cater >> -- >> Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside >> -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development >> > > [Copied also to Community Team mail alias for their reference]. > -- Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development
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