<quote who="Bret Comstock Waldow"> > You can say how it is for you as much as you like - but you are definitely > not speaking for everyone, and I'm glad you're not speaking for most of > the people in my life.
I do not purport to speak for everyone, despite hand-waving accusations to the contrary. However, I *am* speaking for the people who have left SLUG mailing lists in the past due to technocratic elitist attitudes, rudeness, posturing, teasing, sexism, etc., etc. I do speak from experience running the LUG and associating with its core cultural base. I do speak with a good degree of understanding of past and current leadership groups. I also speak from experience as a newbie and outsider to the SLUG culture (a fairly long time ago). If anything, I'm reiterating common themes and values from this list built over many years, by many people. To give you some context, I swear a lot. Probably too much. So if you think that this attitude to the "RTFM" thing comes from some kind of puritanism, you're really barking up the wrong tree. It comes from community building. You can't build a positive community by teaching negative behaviour. That's one of the coolest things about SLUG - it is, on the whole, a very positive place to play, learn, meet people, etc. So when I read "RTFM", it has no discernable impact on *me*. But it makes me think about everyone else reading it, and what that behaviour says about our group. We're better than that, we're more helpful than that, and we've got a heck of a lot more knowledge to share than that. Forget about what "RTFM" makes *you* feel like. Think about what it feels like for a totally new person in our community, itching to try Linux, learn about it, maybe someone who knows it backwards but wants to learn how to contribute. How useful is the expression then? Is it encouraging? Would it make that person feel like participating further? Would they want to come to SLUG in person? Think about the number of people who started out as total newbies in SLUG, who've gone on to make a big difference in the Free Software world. There are a surprising number of them. This is a big LUG - one of the best in the world (no shit, I've been to many). Culture has a lot to do with that. Not just because those people have felt welcome, but because they've learned how to participate in online communities in a productive way. Maybe it's just four letters. But maybe it means a whole lot more. - Jeff -- FISL 7.0: Porto Alegre, Brazil http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/7.0/www/ You know the end is nigh when modern art is relegated to the status of "meme". -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
