Brian A. Seklecki writes: > 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 It is not. I have been trying to give support in the past but presently I've been overwelmed by the number of emails I have to process and the number of bounces from emails that abuse my address I have to delete. I also figure that I can make a much more valuable contribution to the users by spending the little time that remains on development or bug fixes. There was a request for a Wiki on this list a while back. I have started a Wiki, populated with an FAQ which would take care of a lot of the questions and announced it here on the list. There doesn't seem to be a great interest in helping me filling it with more content. Also users seem to consider it easier to try to look for personal support than to read thru an FAQ. My plan was to direct people away from this list towards and the FAQ and from there to direct support. This included changing the message that gets logged when the Xserver doesn't start to not point to this list any longer. This got derailed by my failure to turn this FAQ into an official XFree86 project. > 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? To my knowledge it does that already. > > *) 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. Right. > > *) I wont name vendors, but most of these problems are a result indeed > vendor-specific modifications, customizations, and configuration tools. Also true. To address this I have added a vendor page to the Wiki where vendors can add pointers to whatever support facilities they offer. > > *) Perhaps the error message could be re-worded so as to unambiguously > indicate no expectation of help / a reply? ;-) Do we want to discourage people from the beginning? > > *) 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? It would definitely be better than to include the xfree86@ email address. > > *) 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. > Please add: messages encoded in HTML. Egbert. _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list XFree86@xxxxxxxxxxx http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
