On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 11:47:38AM +1000, David Pastern wrote: | You guys are [.] rude. Uhh, well, I suppose it's a subjective characteristic. | If this is linux helpfulness at it's best No, "this" (unquoted text) is some people reacting to a rude person shoving their freely given help in their face. | I've [.] around with Debian linux now for nearly a week, spending | countless hours trying to get it to work and it's still rooted. If you've never seen a UNIX system before, then certainly installing debian is going to take you more than a few minutes. You really do need to know what you're doing to administrate a computer, just like you would for your car. The only difference is that you find it normal to take your car to a mechanic and not whine at him because it isn't plug-n-play-and-it-magically-does-what-you-wanted. | MAN pages are pathetic. They're great if you're a really | experienced user. That's the definition of them. They're meant to be a *manual* (ie reference), not a _tutorial_. If you want or need a tutorial, don't run the 'man' command. Instead look in a location that has tutorials (also called howtos, eg www.linuxdoc.org). | If not, they are just downright plain confusing, quite often not | even touching on the subject that you want to know about. Man pages cover the subject they are meant to cover, nothing more. If all manpages were full of screen shots of a "next" button and all told you how to plug your computer in and turn it on then it would be impossible to find any information in them. If you need help turning on your computer, then find a tutorial document, not a quick reference on the 'ls' command's options. | Go visit a few IRC channels for help and you get rudely treated I've been in the irc channel sometimes. The people who can't spell "documentation" even when they're pointed at it will be treated rudely. The people who genuinely try to work at it but just need some help are helped. | The RTFM attitude that most experienced linux users pervay is pathetic. Well, it Worked For Me (tm). I have read a lot of manuals in the past several years. I didn't jump from being a "fully functional" windows user to an equivalent linux-only user in a week. I built up my linux knowledge over time. Now I'm at the point where a man page is often quite useful and the hold-your-hand style howtos are hard to read. On the other hand, I can fix only basic problems with my car and anything else requires me to find a mechanic. | The thing is this attitude goes way to the top of linux developers, | so it's not going to change. Hmm. Have you asked any questions on this list? If you did, were you polite about it? Have people responded in an attempt to be helpful or did they beat you over the head for not being perfect? Do remember that the rest of us aren't getting paid by anyone, least of all you. I haven't answered many questions lately because I've been away from my desk with other activities. However, when I am around I do try and help. | I'll make | a parallel here: take for instance a photography club. | You get newbies all the time. Take note that your photo club doesn't see as many new or rude people as a mailing list like d-u does. It's also a bit more personal since you actually get to see the people on a regular basis and do other group building activities. In an environment like this one, at times some people will get fed up with answering the same basic question over and over every time they check their mail. Yes that really does happen. Sometimes I repeat the answer, sometimes I ignore the question, sometimes someone else will answer it instead. Sometimes I post an extremely terse response pointint the asker where the answer is already available to them. | You don't see experienced members of the photography club in my | example back stabbing. Or being rude. Or being unhelpful. If your club grows large enough you'll find all of that. People are imperfect. If you have a small club with around a dozen people, then they can be close enough to almost be best friends with each other. If you have several hundred members, there are certain to be clashes between people at times. | They help each other become better at the hobby they have chosen to | pursue. Indeed. I've received and given a lot of help in these forums. Take a note of the helpful posts, not just the rude posts. In fact, ignore the rude posts altogether if you aren't going to scrape some bit of usefulness from them. | Linux and open source is not just a o/s etc. It's a hobby. It is. | Treat it like one and have some respect for other users. Offer a | helping hand - it's polite and it's good PR. Check the archives -- it's quite a minority that exhibits the characteristics you are ranting about. | If you guys want to persist in elitist attitudes, fine. In ten | years time linux will be dead, open source will be dead and people | will remember it all as "god they were rude elitist bastards". Yep. Sure. *IF* that were the situation. Do you realize that you aren't contributing anything to this hobby by ranting at us? To help other people, as you suggest is needed, you can provide improved documentation. Bear in mind that your precise system is uniquely yours. No one else has the exact same combination of hardware components, software components, and configuration of both. You have the power to change it, and if you want someone to help you fix what you broke, you'll need to be able to clearly explain what you have and did so they can understand what is different about your system. If you don't do that, then you'll often be ignored or chided. Poorly asked questions will often be ignored especially on high-volume lists. I, for one, just don't have the time to read every message let alone try and solve each and every problem. | I'd recently bought (yes paid money) for Suse 8 pro. Well, I can't help you there. I hope you understand my point -- some people are rude and others aren't. There are also people who can look for the information they need and read it, and others who expect someone to spoon-feed it to them. The problem lies on both sides of the fence, but more often than not I observe the bulk of the issue lying on the side of people who rant about not having a magic wand to wave over their system. If you have a real problem with your system, then after reading the relevant documentation, post a clear, complete, and concise description of what the problem is, what you've done, and what results you want and wait for suggestions. -D -- It took the computational power of three Commodore 64s to fly to the moon. It takes at least a 486 to run Windows 95. Something is wrong here. http://dman.ddts.net/~dman/
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