On answering styles (was Re: no "defrag" in Linux?)

[Peter Garrett]

On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 12:38:36 -0400
"Robert E. Butts" <himco2 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 2006-07-22 at 13:14 +0200, Alexander Skwar wrote:
> > Those are givens. It's not necessary to mention this. 
> 
> I'm with the OP on this .. I've been using Linux for ten years, read a
> dozen or more books, and I'm still just a newbie when it comes to
> learning this operating system.
> 
> I teach / train for a living.  In my work, there is no such thing as a
> "given"

I tend to agree that just answering " tune2fs " is a bit terse for many
reading this list :)

I've observed, since I started using Linux about 4 years ago, that there
are at least two attitudes prevalent in the "help" community ( a gross
oversimplification, but for the purposes of clarity... )

1) Give people the command ( implies RTFM, and / or know about --help -h
etc )
2) Try to explain a bit and point to documentation/ help/ URLs

The (1) attitude has its points. Although it is intimidating and obscure
for the beginner, it encourages people to learn for themselves and
ultimately, perhaps, pass on the commands and method to others. On the
other hand, if the people being "helped" are not motivated to learn *nix
as such, and just want  things explained, it can cause them simply to get
angry, or make them feel stupid.

The (2) attitude is mostly the converse of these points. While it is both
more friendly and more immediately helpful, it also sometimes results in
people just doing things "parrot fashion" without understanding what they
are actually doing. Often pointing people to a wiki, documentation and
howtos produces howls of anguish - but it's arguable that people who won't
read are not suited to Free and Open Source Software. A lot of people will
happily copy paste commands from a website without having the faintest
idea what the commands do. This is not to be encouraged, for obvious
reasons.

Clearly a hypothetical (3) would be a combination and extension of both (1)
and (2) - but most people have neither the time nor the skills to do this,
and a lot of mailing list posts would become more like articles ...

On balance, I feel a list like the Ubuntu list should lean more towards
(2)  ;-) On a Debian list the tradition is such that (1) is more often
assumed - but then Debian never claims to be a beginners' distro, whereas
Ubuntu, though used by people at both ends of the knowledge spectrum, is
intended to be easy for ordinary mortals, who might not have aspirations to
geekhood ;-)

Just some thoughts, for what they're worth.

Peter