abdallah clark wrote: > Thank you for your suggestions, but not only are you not realizing > what it means to be a newbie, you have also missed the point of my > communication. Not only patience but also the consideration of others > new to Linux ought to be in play. > ... > It is not my job to do more than report bugs or other problems, as > the man pages indicate.
I am compelled by this to write that you are also failing to realize what is is like to share work on a community project. This is not a job or any of us. We gather together in a shared hope of improving the world by the shared effort of producing free software. The result is donated to the community. Think of it this way. There are several people working in the kitchen preparing meals. These meals are set out on the table for people to eat. Someone eats the meal. They think, there isn't enough spice in this dish. They complain to the volunteers cooking, "Hey, there isn't enough spice." The cooks say, there are thousands of people eating the food and some of them need a low spice content. If you like more spice please feel free to add some. Or feel free to come into the kitchen and help us prepare a good tasting meal that will be good for everyone. But please remember that some people can't tolerate a lot of spice. But then you say, it is not my job to cook. It is only my job to submit feedback. As cooks you should consider that people want more spice. Think about that and think about how you will react if you are one of the cooks in the kitchen? What would you do in that case. You are volunteering your time to cook. You are providing this service free and donating the result. Would you think, "No one is helping. Why am I doing this? Why am I donating time and effort and resources? I should stop cooking." > If you cannot clarify something that is already written and cannot > refer me to any material, anywhere that will clarify what the SIZE > paragraph is saying, then please do not attempt to assign to me the > task of rewriting the SIZE paragraph or any other part of the <man ls> > material. That is a task for an intermediate or advanced user, not a > newbie. Do you ride a bicycle? If so did you learn from a book? Or did someone teach you? There are some tasks that can be learned from written documentation. But there are some things that are much better learned from a teacher. Riding a bicycle is one of those tasks that is better learned from a teacher than from a book. Operating a bicycle would be really scary to try to do if you could only learn from a book. It just isn't possible to sufficiently cover everything that you need to know all in one place. No matter how much someone were to complain about it. Operating a computer operating system is not completely different. Some things can be learned from a book. Perhaps most of it. But different people learn things in different ways. Sometimes people will learn better from a human teacher than from a written document. Perhaps you could find a computer users group from which you could get face to face help and instruction? I think you would really get the most benefit from someone who could immediately spot what you needed and then could react with the right words to help make the points clear. Bob
