Forget Hardy

[Scott Sharkey]

Alan E. Davis wrote:
> If I may, I would like to mention that I see at least two kinds of 
> dysfunctionalilty in the list and forums that may lead me away from 
> Ubuntu, by comparison with my experience with Gentoo.
> 
> 1.  On the Debian mailing lists of old, newbies often were excoriated, 
> put down, with a curt "RTFM".  This is counter productive.  Why do 
> "experts" need to insult and harangue newbies?  When I moved over to 
> Gentoo, I don't think I ever saw such rudeness on the mailing lists. On 
> the contrary, the politeness of the knowledgeable list community was 
> exemplary.

Alan,

I've been on the net and other online fora that predate it since at 
least the early 1980's, so I've seen a lot of evolution in online
communities.

There is a big difference between the Gentoo community, and the 
Debian/Ubuntu community.  Gentoo users, almost by definition, are 
somewhat "computer knowledgable".  At least, the idea of custom 
compiling their own OS does not cause them to run screaming into the 
night.  Hence, they are probably a bit more experienced and a bit
more wise in the ways of the internet, mailing lists, self-help, etc.

Debian, and especially Ubuntu, on the other hand, attract a LARGE crowd
of newbies, many of whom have very little experience.  That, in and
of itself, is no crime - we were ALL newbies once.

The problem is that a large portion of these newbies (especially many
Windows refugees) are also (my terms) "lazy" and "impatient".  What I
mean by this is that they do not know how to describe a problem, never
do any research on the net (GOOGLE is your friend), and expect 
everything to be handed to them without effort, for free.  And usually,
they want this free assistance RIGHT NOW.

Unfortunately, many of those "experts" on these lists get inundated with
demanding, trivially easy to resolve issues from these newbies, and 
after a while, they start to develop a "bad attitude" to these lazy
newbies.  It then starts a vicious death spiral...

> 2.    On Debian and Ubuntu lists I see many unhelpful posts from people 
> who are themselves clueless, but want to be helpful.  On the Gentoo 
> list, by and large, responses were helpful.  This has, for me, made it 
> very difficult to find the answers to my own problems about Ubuntu.

Again, the nature of both lists would lead me to expect nothing less. 
The Gentoo crowd should be pretty clueful, and pretty experienced. 
There are probably a lot more "intermediate" users here, than there,
and while they are tying to be helpful, they are not always right.
At least they are trying, and that does count for something. But,
again, it means that the recipient of the "help" has to be willing
to do some research and critical thinking on their own, to evaluate
the quality of the "help" they are receiving.

> I have had better success with Ubuntu this time around, and it's much, 
> much easier to maintain the system.  I mean to cast no aspersions, but I 
> may move back to Gentoo at some point due to both the solidity of the 
> system (albeit it may be much more difficult to set up and maintain) and 
> the excellence of the support---documentation that is always up to day, 
> a bug system  that is incredibly up-to-date and useful, and .  a list 
> that is free of desultory and unhelpful pollution.
> 
> What is accomplished by the incessant attacks?  Further alienation.

I agree with you that the attacks are pointless.  We need to find a way
to better educate the newbies as to what is expected of them if they
wish to receive useful, free help here.  And we all need to remember
what it was like to be a newbie, and make an effort to genuinely
help if we can.

Unfortunately, there will always be some newbies who never get a clue,
never learn how to ask for help, and just want to take, take, take
without ever giving back.  I have learned over time to just ignore those
people, after having made sufficient effort to assist them.

-Scott