On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 12:10:38PM -0600, Mac McCaskie wrote: > Colin and Stephen > > Let me understand you correctly. You admit the documentation needs > improvement and might be slightly un-helpful to noobies. Ian Murdoch said that debian is a process...not a product. It is ever changing and being fixed and updated. I dont think noobies are expected to write about things they havent figured out yet. But I'd say that once they do learn something that was initially confusing to them, they should document in. So your > solutions are (1) to tell (not ask) the noobie to do fix it (the same > one that doesn't know enough about how to use the system) Debian is volunteer. no once is twisting anyones arm. and (2) blame > the stupid noobie for is ignorance by not working hard enough. people here generally dont snap at newbies unless they: dont use somewhat polite, respectful language dont actually take the time to read what other say may be helpful dont say what they read before asking the question dont say exactly what you dont understand in reference to what you read etc. > > Solution one will perpetuate the inadequate documentation problem. > Solution two will enforce the "Brotherhood of Linux Clubhouse Rules" > and perpetuate the frustration of future noobies. compare what you get from the windows world. no community. no help. need to buy $$$ books. pay $$$$ for tech support. have those lovely worms! Do you realize that in this one forum you get to talk to the TOP people in the organization. When was the last time you spoke to bill gates or steve balmer AND they answered a question about windows and didnt charge you $100,000,000. > > In my two months of seriously "getting down" with debian I have run into > the following: > -A major installation package was broken in the stable release, and > discovered via this list and other sources that the problem was known > with no intention to fix it. > -Found packages with no available documentation > -Found man pages that did not match executable supplied help. > -Found man pages with circular "help" i.e. "foo is foo-like because it > is derived from foo's parent" sounds like you can contribute a few bug reports to CONTRIBUTE to our on-going effort. every one is valuable. > -Discovered the "best support organization" is impatient with frustrated > noobies. We love to help. We love newbies. We dont love razor blade-like remarks, snideness, anger or other things that contribute to bad karma. -Kev
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