This is simply an observation with absolutely no insinuation intended. I don't don't want a flame war or a lecture about the support aspects of free software. I'm well aware: I'd simply like to start a discussion on how to help improve this situation. Duplicates and spam excluded, I count 132 new unique message topics/threads since September 1st. Over 75 of these were un-responded to. That's over 50%. Being the good netitizen that I am (sarcasm), I've taken the liberty to respond to 28 of them (fact). 26 of those were people with difficulty configuring X. Of course, that's probably a direct byproduct of the generic crash error message. So it would seem the concencus is that no response is better than shoveling documentation URLs back at the user? Seems like an awful situation either way. Every newbie who can't get X working probably doesn't spend more than 10 minutes troubleshooting it and gives up. Not that that's anyone's problem but their own; just a shame. *) Most posts only include the log file, part of the log file (the tail end), or the config file, not both. Maybe the generic error message should indicate a need for both? *) Most problems are probably one or two-line fixes. Adding sync rates, changing default color depths, specifying the right driver, and everyone's favorite: restarting xfs(1) on RedHat. However it's hard to tell when the user doesn't include the log and config. *) I wont name vendors, but most of these problems are a result indeed vendor-specific modifications, customizations, and configuration tools. *) Perhaps the error message could be re-worded so as to unambiguously indicate no expectation of help / a reply? *) http://www.xfree86.org/help.html lists everything a thorough support request ought to include. Why not include that URL in the error message too? *) Some posts are just impractical to respond to due to the nature of user and the content of the post. No errors, no logs, and an extremely vague description of the problem. These are probably worthy of a canned response of some sort. Thoughts? -lava _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list XFree86@xxxxxxxxxxx http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
