Re: Documentation and Usability
On 2004-01-17, Mac McCaskie penned:
>
>
> Monique Y. Herman wrote:
>
>> Do you really consider basic etiquette to be a debian-specific "bow
>> down and scrape" requirement?
>>
>
> I consider "basic etiquette" to be very benificial when asking for
> advice AND when giving it. It is my hope that this conversation (aka
> debate) will accomplish a few small goals.
What goal, pray tell? Ninety-eight percent of the time, the people in
this newsgroup who respond to questions are polite and helpful, even
when the person asking the questions clearly hasn't done the first thing
to research the problem first. Every now and then, someone appears out
of the blue to spew forth accusations of purposeful ostracism and insult
the volunteers who do what they can to make Debian a better system.
Yes, I agree that it is best to simply ignore a rude individual, but in
these sorts of situations, ignoring the post will simply reinforce the
person's belief that the Debian community is some sort of secret
society. It's hard to respond to a blatant troll, which in fact is what
this post looked like (especially considering the lack of any further
posts from the OP), without showing a little ire.
> As a noobie (or newbie? it doesn't matter) to this particular platform
> I can understand someone elses' frustration in learning how it use it.
> As a seasoned professional paid to support computer users with any
> level of knowledge, I can also note the severe "Club" atmosphere some
> have displayed today. I have learned to seperate my personal feelings
> of inadaquacies from the frustration of the person asking for help and
> not take it personally. The end result is a user who has not been
> be-littled or shamed and is a little more able to take care of
> themselves (hows that for a win-win situation).
I don't care how you spell newbie, myself. I can understand a person's
frustration in learning anything. But my understanding of their
frustration does not mean that I have to put up with someone insulting
me and the things I care about.
I have no idea what your support job has to do with noting the "Club"
atmosphere blah blah blah ... But maybe you should note the tons of
people who post here asking questions, and the hundreds of responses a
day that appear. Note this: when people ask a polite question and
someone can help them, they get a polite answer. Did you ever watch
Sesame Street? "One of these things is not like the other ..."
Nice little jab there. Personal feelings of inadequacy. Heh. I almost
missed it in all the blather. Look, dude. I learned when I was a kid
that if I wanted help, I had to ask nicely and remember to say "please"
and "thank you." Maybe I'm crazy, but I expect others to have learned
that lesson, and to recognize when that lesson is once again being
taught.
> Yes, I have received some good advice on this list in the last week
> (including today) which has been very helpful. Today, I discovered
> some other comments should go into "useless" catagory.
I'm glad. I'm also amazed that you didn't learn this long ago in other
contexts and generalize it to this one. All sources of information are
part signal, part noise.
>
> What did you learn today?
>
I learned that I'm better at SSX 3 than I used to be at SSX 3, but
that my fiance can still beat the pants off of me with one hand tied
behind his back. And while I got upset that he was able to do in three
tries what I wasn't able to accomplish in hundreds of iterations, I
realized that getting upset at him was inappopriate, and I apologized.
--
monique
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