Re: Why mailing-lists? Usenet have been invented, I hear. ;-)
On 01 Oct 2002 18:23:40 +0100 Peter Whysall <peter.whysall@ntlworld.com>
wrote:
> Terseness is not always bad. I always try to respond to a politely
> asked, well-structured question in kind; I personally think that people
> who post only links to documentation are basically insulting people's
> intelligence. We can all drive Google.
Really? A number of the questions that have been asked on the list are
answered within the first three to five hits on Google using simple key
words from the original posters e-mail. This would seem to indicate that
your statement is incorrect.
> A good example of this is the
> thread about the SBLive. To someone saying "I can't get my SBLive!
> working", a reply consisting solely of a link to the ALSA project is *no
> help at all*. ALSA is a non-trivial exercise to set up - pointing
> someone at it with no supporting material is a good way to waste an
> inexperienced user's time.
That would most likely have been my post. I have in the past provided
_extensive_ help on this list for that very topic. However, let's take a
look at this particular example. Let's see just how difficult setting up
the SB Live is from the Alsa project's main page. Start here:
http://alsa-project.org
Middle of the first page, there is a section entitled "New Users" with a
link just below it entitled "Supported soundcards". Try clicking on it.
Find the card in question in the list. See the link in the fourth column
entitled "Install"? Try clicking on it. Read the instructions. If you
do, you'll note a "Note to debian users:" section telling you exactly what
you need to know. Is that _really_ so hard? Note, this is but one of
_many_ ways to this information from their main page.
--
Jamin W. Collins
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