Forget Hardy

[Avi Greenbury]

Oliver Grawert wrote:
> hi,
> Am Mittwoch, den 11.06.2008, 09:54 -0400 schrieb Bart Silverstrim:
>> And of course they don't want to actually learn about the topic? No 
>> no...we must always assume that we need to act as unpaid consultants for 
>> that users whims because they need to get a specific task "done" right 
>> now? Isn't that what paid support people are for?
> wel, you are free to not answer and give someone else the opportunity if
> it annoys you enough that you just want to throw a manual at them :)

As has been said before, no-one replies with just 'RTFM'.

Pointing someone at the manual rather than copying and pasting from it 
makes them aware of its existence and shows them where it is. This, 
surely, is a good thing?

>> You're making it sound like education and willingness to learn are bad 
>> things that should be avoided. I shudder at the "newbie" asking, without 
>> any jargon, how to set up a mail server with zilch knowledge of how to 
>> even install the operating system and zilch patience to learn what 
>> they're doing. They're usually the first ones to spout off about how 
>> terrible it is in the process despite their ignorance.
> well, they usually want to get the task done and are stuck, if the task
> is harder on ubuntu than on windows i would say we need to improve
> here ... such feedback is good and valuable for us developers to make
> the software more user friendly ... and yes, i'd love to be able to have
> a mailserver set up with five mouseclicks in ubuntu ...

It's rarely harder on *buntu. It's nearly always different.

Telling someone how to do a particular task isn't really all that 
helpful in the long run unless they understand why it isn't done in 
whatever way they expected it to be done.

>> This is a service, advice from this list and war stories shared. And 
>> most of the people have advice to give because they went through this 
>> stuff themselves. They impart this onto others so the user doesn't need 
>> to ask the question again.
> well, but there are new users on a daily base, do you expect them to be
> up to speed right away ? 

Yes. I expect new users to already be familiar with tools such as Google 
and Yahoo, and to notice that nearly every application has a 'Help' item 
in the menu.

>> You're talking about the spirit of Ubuntu. The spirit of Ubuntu doesn't 
>> include encouraging ignorance and reliance on others. It means sharing 
>> information and learning to make you a better person for the experience.
>>
> but also to get this information across in a respectful human way ...
> 

And, surely, to ask for it in same?

I see very little in the way of disrespectful responses to respectful 
posts on here. In general, if it's disrespectful it's either the 
beginning of a thread, or a response to that.

-- 
Avi Greenbury