You know, I'm not as hard core as some on the fedora list about mailing list etiquette. But when someone publicly corrects you for making a simple mistake you shouldn't freak out. The people who are most willing to help you will instantly put your name in their permanent ignore list. Cursing and blaming and yelling and such are just not acceptable in a public forum. Especially a list that gets up to a thousand messages per day.

In one such reply, the fellow just asked that the poster try not to break threading. It's the only way anyone can make sense of the shear volume of the list. He was simply trying to help the poster understand how to communicate with those most able to help. He could've said nothing and left the poster ignorant to the problem. Instead he stuck his neck out on the chopping block and made a suggestion to help the poster elicit more repsonses to his questions.

Do some very helpful list members appear to "dish out crap" at times? Absolutely. You may do the same after receiving 80,000 emails. Most of which have already been answered previously in the fedora list archives. Many threads could have been cut down to 2-3 replies instead of dozens had the poster taken care when composing his original request.

The responder of one thread was trying to explain that one concise question is the best way to get one concise answer. The poster's original message stated "some sort of error" and did not post the precise error message nor any details about where he saw this error. How could anyone intelligently answer such a question? The responder requested a clarification. This is reasonable. He could have been aggressive and request that the poster think through his questions more thoroughly before posting. Alas, he remained conservative and just asked for the text of the error message.

The poster claims that the entire ordeal of dealing with fedora list has made his day horrible. I submit that his cursing, name calling, and personal attacks has made everyone's day horrible.

A reasonable person might expect others to take just a few moments of their own, personal time to compose their requests for help in a form that can be answered in a minimum of replies. Time you don't spend composing a help request is time you are wasting for others. Most knowledgeable people refuse to waste their time on poorly formed help requests. There are others who need help and understand the value of good questions.

Seriously, Eric Raymond's How to Ask Questions the Smart Way is extremely helpful if you truly want good answers.

By the way, seriously, no one cares what operating system or distribution you use. This isn't some religion or penguin worshipping cult where we try to brainwash you into thinking we are perfect. Collectively, we don't care if 5 thousand or 5 billion people use the operating system distribution we prefer. This is just a bunch of people who use Fedora Core and either like to help others or need help themselves. We all realize that using a new operating system is a bit scary, confusing, and often frustrating. But demanding answers and threatening to abandon the distribution only gets you added to the ignore list of those who can help. It reinforces a notion that you have no real intention to make any effort to learn anything. And if you aren't willing to learn then please expect that no one is willing to teach.

Labels: linux