-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 21 March 2008 01:52:35 pm AlanJ wrote: > Trouble is if you split the list into newbies and non-newbies the people > the other Alan despises so much won't think of themselves as newbies. I agree with you that an experienced user/newbie split is probably sub-optimal for the reason you describe. My experience with debian-user and the Ubuntu forums over the years has taught me two things: 1) Newbies will use mailing lists, too. However, the questions asked on mailing lists are generally better thought out and are easier to read (both based on the interface involved as well as the writer's attempt at English). All one has to do is thumb through Ubuntu's forums and Debian's mailing lists to see the difference here. Even many Ubuntu users get frustrated with the forums and go hijack the Debian lists instead, since usually the two are close enough and the odds of getting a clueful answer out of the forums is near nil. 2) Expecting users to read the documentation before posting is not unreasonable. > As a relative newbie myself I find it hard to swallow some of the > near-elitist attitude shown by some experts, calling someone who isn't as > experienced as you a noob is just plain insulting. I hope when those people > learn something new they don't get a dose of their own medicine as I doubt > they will like it. This isn't about whether or not people posting have as much experience as everyone else. If that were the case, there really would not be any reason for any list to exist except wine-devel. This /is/ about whether or not we should make it easy for people who can't write a proper sentence (much less a smart question to solve their problem) or who want free handholding with no effort on their part (if they want that, they should go pay Codeweavers for support, not beg the public). If newbies can't be bothered to meet the experienced users half-way, what is the motivation to meet them halfway? It's not elitist to think that wine can't do the same thing Debian has with it's lists. The lowest common denominator needs to be set at the lowest point experienced users are willing to tolerate without scaring off the newbies that are willing to help us help them. Right now, I feel the LCD is set to the lowest point AOL-level newbies are willing to tolerate, experienced users be damned. > How you deal with the people who don't read the FAQs, check the AppDB, etc > and can't post a thought out question is the miilion dollar question that > every help/support person would love to know the answer to. Having worked the public helpdesk before, that's a pretty cut and clear answer: No free tech support, period. In one case, the product was a service and a large, long-time loyal customer started a community list to fill that niche. In another, the product had an open source project to which the commercial version was closely related, and that filled the niche. On both lists, the general attitude from the community to the stupid questions was "Go pay $VENDOR to help you if you can't read the manual." Debian's not that much different. Even there, there's occasionally the persistently clueless (not a noob, but someone who seems to actively repel clues) who get told to hit the Debian consultants page and pay someone to help them... - -- Paul Johnson baloo@xxxxxxxxx -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFH5DlEUCxPKZafKh0RApZ5AJ9t/vqv7lGzhAy/JQXDrJfK+8GepQCdEniB 8+1uDCibWVOhzM+ITfPhj6I= =G2Rf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
