Quality of Ubuntu List

[Fred Roller]

Amedee Van Gasse (on Ubuntu mailing lists) wrote:
> On Sat, October 10, 2009 18:39, Allen Meyers wrote:
>
>   
>> Hi there
>>
>> Sometime back I lost patience with a few of the over active mouthy
>> list members and backed off the in terns of asking questions, but
>> continued to read the posts in silence. I have both 9.04 and Lenny and
>> subscribe to that forum in a fairly active manner. I left one list
>> because of mouthy "word war" prevaricators to learn there is no
>> getting away from them. There is only learning to live with them and
>> try not to let them be representative of Linux in the eye of the
>> newbie.
>> Lists forums, and the experienced giving users are the back bone of
>> growth.
>> There are OS's less tolerant of newbies, believe me I know. Suse was
>> one of my early learning endeavors and I almost gave up on Linux
>> thinking they represented Linux.
>> Ubuntu and users like "tell it like it is" Amedee represent that
>> backbone I commented on earlier.
>> Those that remember my "dumb" questions and were patient with a user
>> approaching 80 deserve my respect and gratitude. Because of them I may
>> not be a guru yet  but Ubuntu and folks like Amedee allowed me to step
>> out of the newbie class and climb a few rungs in the Linux ladder. Hey
>> Amedee stay after those a holes, cut em off at the pass.
>>     
>
> Hey Allen,
>
> Remember that this is *sounder*, the off topic list.
> There are no rules here
> (only great scotch)
>   
Single malt and >18yrs ;-)  Nothing less will be tolerated here.
> You don't see me engaging in "word wars" on the official list, do you?
> Here on sounder I like to say what I think, like it or not, without a lot
> of cognitive filters.
>
> But on the official list I *try* to help. I am only a newbie that has
> learned a lot from the list, and by learning I have realized that there is
> even more that I don't know. I don't think that I will ever be able to
> give back to the community what it gave me, but I try. Not because I am
> supposed to give back, but because I want it.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Amedee Van Gasse
> amedee at vangasse.eu
>
>
>   
+1,  One of the hurdles new users face is feeling they have nothing to 
offer because they are not computer experts themselves.  The principle I 
personally use is to only offer the help I feel confident is accurate.  
Sometimes I go quiet so as to read and learn more.  I have Vbox and a 
really fast rebuild method that works for me :-P, or occasionally a 
spare system to experiment on.  I do hope to help development further 
upstream as well one day soon.  As for the new users; I try to point 
them in the direction of what they /are/ good at:  
artist->desktop/splash screen groups, lawyers->GPL development, 
writer->manual development, etc. etc.  Everyone has something to offer.

I heard a line from a movie I could not name but here is the jist:

bus driver about a mentally challenged regular passenger...
"She doesn't have much to offer; but, she gives you all she's got."

Posters will be wrong on occasion and with proper fact linking can be 
corrected and that in itself is a lesson everyone can gain from in the 
long run.  If they thought it was a correct answer then how many others 
think the same.  On more than one occasion some one posts a solution /I/ 
thought was good and to find out it was wrong /or/ there is a better 
solution.  i.e.  I love dd and one thread essentially pitted dd against 
rsync.  I will be playing with rsync and learning what it is about as a 
result of the thread because it exposed some strengths vs. dd.  I still 
love dd, but there are better solutions in certain situations.

Contrary to what had been posted once, I wish Ubuntu-tech-help would be 
the first place people came for help, if only to be pointed in the right 
direction for their search.

-- 
Fred
www.fwrgallery.com

"Life is like linux, simple.  If you are fighting it you are doing something wrong."