Hello,
I agree. If the person is asking a question that should be posted to another
list, the right thing to do would be to let them know nicely and point them to where
they should be asking. I think that some people here are a bit too rough on newbie
users that just want their question answered. If you're at all interested in the mass
adoption of VNC, we can't be turning off these new people with harsh replies telling
them to RTFM. Some of these cranky RTFM posts sound down right rude and could have
been worded in a way that would spar less debate on the issue.
While I agree that this list wasn't created to answer "Networks 101" type
questions, if someone asks one, feel free to answer them if you can while politely
informing them that this list doesn't normally deal with those types of issues. If
you don't feel like answering the question, but insist on posting a reply, it would be
best if the reply politely pointed them to somewhere that they can look for their
solution. There will be less debate if the reply was constructed in such a way that
you would like to hear someone speak to you.
Just look at all of the traffic that this debate has generated on the list
over the years and compare it to the off-topic questions and answers. I'm sure that
the ratio is pretty high in favor of the posts about this topic. If the goal is to
reduce off-topic posts to this list, I guess it would be best to ignore posts that you
feel are off-topic instead of spurring heated debates or posting RTFM to the list as a
reply.
In conclusion, I understand that it is frustrating sometimes for the people
that are "veterans" of this list to keep seeing violations to their RTFM rule, but
please understand that these "violators" generally do not know each other, do not talk
to each other, and are not a part of some large group whose goal is to make our lives
difficult by posting unrelated posts. They're just innocent people attempting to get
an answer from some of the VNC gurus about issues that are perplexing them. Let's try
to keep our professional and helpful nature on the list and try not to get frustrated
if people don't RTFM before posting a question here. After all, it's only an email,
right?
- Steve Bostedor
http://www.vncscan.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Illtud Daniel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 11:09 AM
To: VNC List
Subject: Re: FAQs, RTFM, and the growing community
Steve Blinkhorn wrote:
> Often, the problem with powerful open-source software is that the
> documentation is opaque to newcomers. That's because it's often
> written by the same people who designed and wrote the code. Things
> which seem glaringly obvious once you're an insider can be
> infuriatingly difficult just to locate at first.
You may be right to an extent, but a lot of the questions
that we've been seeing recently are "I'm running VNC on
operating system Foo, behind a NAT/Firewall/Router. I'm
in China/Oregon/Somerset running the viewer on operating
system Bar attempting to connect to the server in Iceland/
Zimbabwe/Llanfairpwll. I can't get through, what should I
do?"
**Nothing of which is a VNC issue**. This isn't a mailing
list for Networks 101.
--
Illtud Daniel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Uwch Ddadansoddwr Systemau Senior Systems Analyst
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru National Library of Wales
Yn siarad drosof fy hun, nid LlGC - Speaking personally, not for NLW
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