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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
[email protected]
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