Re: On what is helpful and what is not [was: Re: Wifi]
On Tue, 11 Mar 2014 08:16:12 +1100
Charlie <ariestao@ipstarmail.com.au> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Mar 2014 11:15:11 -0400 Dave Woyciesjes sent:
>
> > It's attitudes like that that keep people away from Debian &
> > Linux.
>
> Do you think so?
I definitely think so. And if we ever want our OS of choice to have
sufficient market share and mindshare that hardware vendors make their
goods Linux compatible, we'd better quit blowing away potential Linux
people by insulting them
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nub) when they make a
minor mistake.
> Or is it that people are accustomed to having it all
> done for them, just turn the key and the engine fires up?
Mailing list participants aren't digital. They all don't fall into
the guru category or the "having it all done for them" category. Those
with dumb symptom descriptions, civilly let them know about "How to ask
questions the smart way", or, if there are just one or two unclarities,
ask clarifying questions. Or ignore their questions and let other
answer.
The few who continually ask dumb questions, just filter them out
-- procmail's easy and life's too short.
But as Dave said, yelling at first-time poster for a non-repeated minor
mistake is just going to drive him over to Apple or back to Microsoft,
and once we've driven away a few million, don't come crying to me when
hardware vendors ignore Linux because almost nobody's there.
>
> That "attitude" should be ignored if one is interested in the
> assistance required to do what they want.
> But if not, it rather
> prepares a new user for the RTFM remark and that they have to take a
> few knocks and get back up again. Isn't that what life is all about?
I don't think that's what life's about, nor do I think it prepares the
new user for anything. If I forget my turn signal in traffic and the guy
behind me gets out of his car yelling and screaming at me, he has a
problem. If a guy posts about wifi and function keys and someone calls
him a "total nub" (see Urban Dictionary definition), then the
nub-caller has a problem.
Which is fine, except one of those problems leads to road rage, and the
other loses yet another Linux user and gives the hardware vendors even
more reason to ignore Linux compatibility.
SteveT
Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance
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