Re: what's up with all the attitude
Greg Folkert wrote:
It is not that we have an attitude, just that better than 90% of the
questions asked on Debian-User have been asked before and have solutions
already in the archive. Nearly everyone asking questions says "I search
the archives" or "I've Googled for this". This then also leads us to be
suspicious as to the sincereity, nee laziness. You might get a ton of
"Read The Fine Manual" with pointers to the proper location. But
understand, it is not to dis you.
Couple of lists I am on, the matter of factly answers are all RTFM with
exact locations and nothing else.
As far as Linux is concerned, that's often the best kind of answer, and
many people recognise this and ask 'where can I find document X?' rather
than 'how do I do Y?' Certainly, documentation is a bit random. Nobody
gets very far with any brand of Linux without a willingness to read
documents, not always well-written, and it is no kindness to try to hide
this from anyone.
Not to forget that while you want to do Y today, you may well need to do
Z with the same application tomorrow, and a link to a really good, well-
hidden (sorry, poorly-indexed) document can be worth much more than a
do-this-then-this answer. Other times, what you really need is a step-
by-step answer, because you've already covered the developer's web site
three times, and cannot make the slightest sense of the documents there.
You may be missing a new and important concept, and a helpful word can
be the key to unlock the document.
What tends to get peoples' backs up is PhD research questions: 'Can you
tell me the pros and cons of N as an encryption technique?', crossposted
to numerous groups and having nothing specific to do with Debian, or
wherever else they are posted. Then you'll see attitude.
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