Forget Hardy

[Steve Lamb]

Res wrote:
> Did you miss the bit Isaid about  you cant help some people? seems you 
> did. I have been through this frustration many many many years ago, and 
> its simply much easier to ignore the dumb questions then attack the 
> newbies.

    Define attack?  As has been pointed out when people say "Oh they were told
to RTFM" those people often leave off that it includes a pointer to the FM,
normally the specific section, page and information.  Same with "Google it"...
followed with either a search which shows the terms used to find the
information or the search term followed by URLs to the relevant hits.

    Those are not attacks.  They may not be the professional and courteous
answers people who are accustomed to professional support are used to but
that's because this list, and thousands like it, are *not* professional
support.  We don't have to be courteous.  We can be curt.  And being curt is
not attacking.  Being curt is giving the answer, or directions to the answer,
without all the fluff.  It is still help.

> Maybe they need to change the list to advanced technical support then,
> or start a new list ubuntu-newbies or whatever, where they can go and ask 
> the silly repetitive questions without ridicule for those that would 
> rather attack or be narky, then simply ignore them.

    This has often been floated about here, and D-U, and Exim-User and quite a
few other technical lists that I have or had subscribed to.  The answer is
always the same.  Why?  If people are asking for help they are looking for
people more knowledgeable than themselves.  Such people rarely /volunteer/ to
sit on a "newbies" list.  Furthermore since people are generally newbies only
once when they are all growed up they will probably migrate off the newbie
list.  So what good is a newbie list populated only by newbies?  None.

    Furthermore that function is better filled by a webboard.  There are
dozens of those floating around all focused on helping the newbies.  When you
get to the point where you're using a decent mail client, find the list and
figure out how to subscribe the basic theory is that you're also capable of
performing basic searches on the internet and reading the fine manual for the
mundane troubles you're having.

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