I'd like to take this moment, and point this letter as the poster child for
what NOT to do when someone asks a question. Sure in my previous email I had
said that I have a life and that I get a lot messages, and sometimes I don't
respond to messages on mailing lists. But I followed up with some answers.
I'm not saying that I am the Martha Stewart(or moderator) of this mailing
list, but since this list is for newbies, and since I joined this list, not
because I'm a newbie, but because I was once a newbie, and I want to help
the newbies. Obviously if everyone here was a newbie, then not a lot of help
would be offered here. (imagine, 3 illiterate people, trying to teach each
other how to read and write.. sure they would probably come up with their
own alphabet, but it won't be anything to what everyone else uses).
> I for one don't even bother answering questions to which the answers are
> trivial, or easy to look up. I have enough work looking up the solutions
to my
> own problems.
Rial, if you're IQ really was higher than that of a carrot, you wouldn't
have wasted your so called valuable time, which you spend trying to solve
your own problems, by writing this letter.
> What pisses me off the most is people who don't even know how to upgrade
their
> graphics card, insist on running linux because they heard some hype about
it,
> and then get all frustrated when it's not as easy as baking an egg.
I have no clue how to bake an egg. What comes easy to you, may not come easy
to others, I can install slackware 7.0 in less than 15 minutes on a machine,
yet installing debian, or freebsd, or even mandrake would take me 30-40
minutes. Just because someone else can't install slack in 15 minutes,
doesn't mean they shouldn't try.
Why did you pick up Linux ? I'm sure you heard about it from someone else,
who told you how great it was.. guess what.. just because that person wasn't
part of a big News agency, doesn't mean you didn't buy into the hype. He
hyped it, you bought it and you installed it.
> Also, nobody cares to read manuals anymore. Everybody on this list claims
to
> have read all the apropriate manuals/docs, but found nothing, so they ask
here.
> And then they expect us "guru's" to solve their problems. Meanwhile the
thing
> they're asking is usually explained in detail somewhere between the second
and
> seventh paragraph in the man-page of the program that's causing them
trouble.
> But that means they have to type in "man rpm" or something, and that's too
> hard. I wonder what the heck makes people decide to run linux anyway, if
reading
> some documentation is too hard, or too much to ask?
Just because you are armed with a ton of books, doesn't mean you know which
book is appropriate for your current problem.
Say you're a 16year old kid bent on getting a drivers license, and want to
be trained by a school. How do you know which school to pick ?
no one can force you to pick a school, but you decide to pick one, after
doing some research.. this research usually involves talking to other people
who in turn will give you their opinions on school's they've been to. The
more people you talk to , the more schools you'll hear about. How do you
know which one is the right one ?
say you do decide to go with one school that a friend recommend, but that
school wasn't as great as you thought ? the instructor didn't speak english.
? My point here is that,
.1. Just because there's so much documentation about Linux, doesn't mean
it's all good. I'll take the phrase from Perl, "theres more than one way to
do it", my answers to do things differed from
the answers of others, everyone said go into /etc/inittab and change the
initrd to 3 instead of 5, Guess what, I learn't something new there. I would
always have gone into /etc/rc.d to turn it off.
Now Art may find my way of doing it easier than editing the innittab. maybe
he's new to Linux, and isn't familiar with vi, now he stands a chance of
really screwing up his boot scripts, maybe he found my answer too hard, and
liked the innittab answer. In the end he knows more than he did before he
asked the question.
With your response, the only thing he knows now is that Linux users don't
want to help him, and want to be part of some exclusive club. He gets a bad
impression of the Linux community, and goes and tells all his friends. Who
in turn think that the entire Linux community is made up of immature people
like you.
> Kit: "noone wants to help..." Now let's say you sell your car. Someone
comes
> over and buys it. Then a week later he's at your door again. "How do I
shift up
> or down?" --> "Manual page 15 and where the heck did you get your driver's
> license?" Then 3 days later he comes back "And how about reverse, does my
car
> (and so on.......).
Art seems to have asked 3 questions, to which he hadn't recieved an answer
earlier. Comparing him to your
car customer is unfair and stupid. Just because you answered the same
question 200 times to 200 different people, doesn't mean that they went and
shared it with the rest of the world
the 201st person you blew up at, doesn't need to be screamed at. The answers
are obvious to you because you've heard the question 200 times.
Just because I don't need to look at the keyboard to type, doesn't mean that
someone who just got a new computer, and does need to look at the keyboard
is an idiot.
He may very well be smarter than me when it comes to carpentry or astro
physics, how would you like it if you had a question in Physics, and the
only person who could answer your question called you a
dumb moron, and compared your IQ to a carrot ? when all you were trying to
do was to get an answer to a problem you had come across for the first time.
Yet he had come across it 5 years ago and solved it. ?
My point is that you too were once a newbie, and just because you aren't,
doesn't give you the right to degrade people on a mailing list, just to make
yourself sound technically proficient in your own eyes.
>From your reply to the email, you didn't give an ounce of advice, and the
only "technical expertise" you displayed was that you know how to type, and
can move your mouse around.
If you do consider yourself a "guru", and feel your valuable time is being
wasted by sifting through the messages on this list, then maybe it's time
you unsubscribed from the mailing list. I'm sure a linux guru like you
knows how to do that.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rial Juan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2000 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: [newbie] Where is the so called help???????
>
> Kiddo,
>
> before you even start THINKING about running linux, you must be well aware
that
> it's a pretty hard OS to master for those with absolutely no technical
> background. Linux is an operating system that tries to hide nothing for
the
> user, unlike MS Windows. If you have no basic understanding of how a
computer
> works, and I don't mean knowing your way around in WordPerfect or
something like
> that, I mean: how a computer works internally, well, if you don't have a
basic
> understanding about that, then linux is not for you. Also, what's that
stupid
> remark about "too much technical jargon" anyway? This is a hacker's OS,
what did
> you expect? If it's too technical for you, well... Nobody forces you to
run it.
>
> What pisses me off the most is people who don't even know how to upgrade
their
> graphics card, insist on running linux because they heard some hype about
it,
> and then get all frustrated when it's not as easy as baking an egg.
>
> Also, nobody cares to read manuals anymore. Everybody on this list claims
to
> have read all the apropriate manuals/docs, but found nothing, so they ask
here.
> And then they expect us "guru's" to solve their problems. Meanwhile the
thing
> they're asking is usually explained in detail somewhere between the second
and
> seventh paragraph in the man-page of the program that's causing them
trouble.
> But that means they have to type in "man rpm" or something, and that's too
> hard. I wonder what the heck makes people decide to run linux anyway, if
reading
> some documentation is too hard, or too much to ask?
>
> I for one don't even bother answering questions to which the answers are
> trivial, or easy to look up. I have enough work looking up the solutions
to my
> own problems.
>
> Kit: "noone wants to help..." Now let's say you sell your car. Someone
comes
> over and buys it. Then a week later he's at your door again. "How do I
shift up
> or down?" --> "Manual page 15 and where the heck did you get your driver's
> license?" Then 3 days later he comes back "And how about reverse, does my
car
> have one?" --> "Still manual page 15, and of course it has one, you
moron!" Then
> 4 days later he comes back "How do I turn on the radio?" --> "Explained on
page
> 4 in the radio manual. Never seen an on/off swicth before?" Then a few
days
> later "I heard rumours that you can slide the seat to the front or back so
you
> can reach the pedals better. Is that true? Is it worth the effort? Won't
it
> degrade the lateral tire-pressure? My feet won't get stuck in the engine,
will
> they?"
>
> I think you'd grabbed a big gun by the third time the dude comes over,
shot the
> bastard trough the head, hid the body, and sold the car again. This time
to
> someone with an IQ higher than that of a carrot.
>
> On Mar 13 Kit wrote:
>
> > BOY, I agree...with you BIGTIME...noone wants to help...they just
> > want to
> > tell you to go somewhere and read...well, thats what I've been
> > doing...and doing
> > and doing...but it still does no good...most all tutorials are
> > very poorly written.
> > they use too much technical jargon...they don't remember that
> > HELP means you must
> > help them on the persons level of understanding...if they had
> > technical knowlegdge,
> > they wouldn't be asking questions...they would of fix their own
> > problem...man, what
> > a bunch of dum people...for knowing so much as they do...
> >
>
> --
>
> Rial Juan <http://nighty.ulyssis.org>
> e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Belgium tel: (++32) 89/856533
> ulyssis system admininstrator <http://www.ulyssis.org>
>
> The little critters in nature; they don't know they're ugly.
> That's very funny... A fly marying a bumble-bee...
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Sign the petition at http://www.libranet.com/petition.html
> Help bring us more Linux Drivers
>
>
>
