Quoting optimus ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> I sense your discontent with the way newbie questions are answered. The
> experts who answer newbie questions in the newbie mailing list can be
> depended to answer newbie questions in a simple manner using the simple
> "click-and-run" terminology that you want whenever applicable.
I admire people who're able to do that successfully, and encourage their
efforts.
Looks to me like there would be a couple of serious problems with the
general approach Ramon favours:
1. "Simple click-and-run terminology" is often _distribution-specific_.
In those cases, questions might be correctly and fully answerable in
that fashion only by oldtimers who happen to run the exact same distribution
(and possibly the same distro release) as the questioner. Techniques
of the sort described often fail to work across distributions /
releases, and may confuse the questioner or produce actively misleading
information.
2. Aforementioned click-and-run tools tend towards complexity in the
sense of having complex dependencies on other tools and a large number
of lines of code, and consequently can go wrong, fail, or give incorrect
information more readily than simpler tools.
If I tell a user "please login as the root user and tell me exactly what
the command '/sbin/ifconfig -a' says" or "tell me exactly what the
command 'mount' says", I know that the tool will be present and give
uniformly useful information on any minimally functional Linux or BSD
system.
So, someone who says "Please give me help that involves my using only
user-friendly, graphical tools" is also impliedly saying "...and I want
to exclude help from 99% of those competent, able, and willing to
find and fix my problem".
But If everyone's happy with the remaining 1%, that's great! Shows that
people can get effective help from community help resources even when
the latter figuratively has its arms tied behind its back.
On the other hand, if people seeking help in that fashion enjoy the warm
fuzzies therein, but eventually notice that it's rare for them to
actually get real help with real problems, the above analysis might
explain why.
--
Cheers, "The front line of defense against such sophisticated
Rick Moen viruses is a continually evolving computer operating
[EMAIL PROTECTED] system that attracts the efforts of eager software
developers." -- Bill Gates
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