Article: "Hi jackasses, RTFM and stop wasting our time trying to help you children learn."

[Danno]

Just saw this interesting opinion article about how abusive Linux snobs
are to Linux newbies who want to give the OS a chance. I hope no one
here ventures into that much rudeness when it comes to java. Almost
everyone here from Roedy, Patricia, Oliver, Hawtin, Chris are pretty
decent to newbies here and get them the answer they need. As a founder
of my local jug, I try to make it important to let beginners in, and
don't "over-tech" them as much when they need answers.

Article link: Linux Snobs - Real Barriers to Entry
http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/snobsoped.shtml

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

Just saw this interesting opinion article about how abusive Linux
snobs are to Linux newbies who want to give the OS a chance. I hope
no one here ventures into that much rudeness when it comes to java.
Almost everyone here from Roedy, Patricia, Oliver, Hawtin, Chris are
pretty decent to newbies here and get them the answer they need. As
a founder of my local jug, I try to make it important to let
beginners in, and don't "over-tech" them as much when they need
answers.

Article link: Linux Snobs - Real Barriers to Entry
http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/snobsoped.shtml

I don't think there's any call to be mean to people, but I find it
highly grating when someone shows up on a newsgroup (mailing list, web
board) and demands answers when they clearly have made zero effort
themselves.

If someone makes a polite request, I'm much more interested in helping
them.

I think this might be in part a cultural thing. I've noticed that a
lot of the posts that come off as incredibly rude or demanding seem to
be written by people for whom English is not the first language, and
who don't seem to live in the Americas or Western Europe. That group
also seems to favor using textspeak abbreviations ('u' for 'you', '2'
for 'to', etc), which seems to drive a lot of people up the wall,
fairly or not.

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

I don't think there's any call to be mean to people, but I find it
highly grating when someone shows up on a newsgroup (mailing list,
web board) and demands answers when they clearly have made zero
effort themselves.

Since one of the links from the article criticizes the link in my sig:

Look, you can do whatever you want to do. It's just that if you
follow the suggestions that in the "smart questions" document, you are
*far* more likely to get an answer (or even better, answer the
question yourself, in the meantime learning a lot that will serve you
well in the future). A person can rant and rave about how it's
unfair, but in the end, that's not going to help them get an answer.
Following the instructions in the "smart questions" document *will*.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the "teach a man to fish"
approach.

Also, there seems to be an underlying assumption in all of these
articles that we *should* want more users. Why? A lot of linux users
worry that linux will pander to the inexperienced user and become just
as (insert whatever negative here) as windows. There are always a
handful of experienced users in any discussion group who will bend
over backwards to help a newbie, provided that the newbie shows
initiative and the willingness to absorb some knowledge, not just get
the job done. Is that so wrong? When I'm donating my own spare time,
don't I have the right to decide who I should help and who I can
ignore? (I'll admit that's different from actively insulting people.)
If anything, I find that if someone irrationally insults a newbie,
someone else appears to try to help the newbie, even if they hadn't
participated in the discussion beforehand.

I also think there is a big difference between helping someone use an
operating system and helping someone use a language. People use
operating systems all the time without fundamentally understanding
what's going on. They're users. But if you're asking about a
programming language, that's different.

It's the difference between the expectations one would have from a
homeowner vs. a builder or architect.

 

[Roedy Green]

Article link: Linux Snobs - Real Barriers to Entry
http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/snobsoped.shtml

We had a very knowledgeable guy in our PC club. If ever asked a
question he would go on for at least 30 minutes. The questioner had in
mind most of the time a couple of sentences for a reply. I used to
host the Q&A session and tended to that mode myself, looking on my
answers more as entertainment for everyone than specific help for the
questioner.

You have to remember we are neotenous apes, and much of our
conversation has an undertone of dominance hierarchy. As we are
expounding technically, we are also displaying like a prairie chicken
or dominating. Knowledge of some esoteric realm is a great way for an
otherwise low status ape to impress his fellows. Much question
answering is a form of hazing.

It is a bit silly when a novice asks to learn esoteric knowledge and
is told he is stupid for not knowing it already. He is clearly working
to rectify the situation.

It is a very old game. Knights used to laugh at their squires when
they did not know the complete set of venery rules (brace of
pheasants). See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/collectivenouns.html

 

[Oliver Wong]

Just saw this interesting opinion article about how abusive Linux snobs
are to Linux newbies who want to give the OS a chance.

One of my more memorable experience with "Linux snobs" was when I had
asked help for a networking driver. I had downloaded a driver off the
internet, put it on a floppy diskette, loaded it onto the linux machine, and
then checked out the readme. It said to compile the drivers using "gcc"
followed by 3 lines worth of command line arguments (at around 80 characters
per line, that's 240 characters worth of command line arguments).

So I type in the command exactly like I see it (except I ignored the
newlines, and uses spaces instead), only to have gcc tell me that one of the
flags I provided (e.g. "-foo") was no longer supported. There was no
suggestion of what flag I should use instead, and simply omitting the flag
yielded even more cryptic and dangerous sounding error messages.

So I during that period (a couple of years ago, while I still had the
exact command line I entered, and the exact error messages I got), whenever
I found out someone was an "experienced" Linux user, I'd ask them if they
knew how to solve my problem. One of the answers I got was "If you're too
stupid to use a compiler, you shouldn't be using Linux."

Now here's the real shocker: this wasn't in an online newsgroup or
mailing list. He had said this to me, in person, to my face. We were both
computer science students at the same university, attending the same class.
In fact, he was my partner for a project in which we were writing a RPG in
Java. I had designed the finite state machine interfaces that he had to
implement to allow for the transition between my "overworld map" engine to
his "monster battle" engine. We got the highest grade possible for the
project (an A). Either he was saying that for all compilers, I was too
stupid to use them (and thus too stupid to use Linux); or he was saying that
if there exists a compiler for which I am too stupid to use, I would also be
too stupid for Linux. Both interpretations didn't make sense to me.

I was stunned by his response, so our conversation had ended there. The
next days, we'd continue to meet up and work on the project, but we never
brought up the topic of Linux again.

Article link: Linux Snobs - Real Barriers to Entry
http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/snobsoped.shtml

This article links to a blog entry in which someone claims that people
who say "RTFM" do so because they don't know the answer and wish to sound
smart. In my experience, when someone doesn't know the answer, they tend to
simply not respond, letting someone else give it a stab. Every now and then
in this group, you'll see someone ask a very obscure question, and they
receive zero responses; I suspect because no one knows the answer.

The article also links to other sites which criticize Eric Steven
Raymond, and from that, infer that the "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"
document (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) is "bad". This
is known as an "ad hominem" attack, and is a logical fallacy. I've read the
smart-questions document, and while I don't agree with everything it says, I
believe that a person who blindly follows the rules there will probably get
better results than a person who willingly breaks all of the rules. I'm NOT
saying that I know Eric Raymond personally, and he's a great guy, and that
all those bad things said about him are lies. In fact, I had never even
noticed who the author of the document was until reading the above article,
and the sites it links to. I've never met Eric Raymond. I'm just saying
regardless of Mr. Raymonds personality, the document, overall, has some good
advice.

Every now and then I get surprised by what people find insulting.
Someone asked me for advice on building a custom computer (not physically
building it; rather selecting the components and having it pre-built). She
showed me the specs she was considering. I knew that all she never plays any
games at all on her computer; not even solitair or hearts. So I told her she
didn't need the $300 3D accelerator video card she had listed (this was back
in the days before Vista, so OS UIs were strictly 2D), and onboard video
would be sufficient. For some reason, she took this as an insult, I guess
because I was implying that she wasn't "worthy" of the video card. She
complained, and pointed out that I had an expensive video card in my
computer (I *do* play games, like Fable, Doom 3, etc.), and accused me of
treating her like an inferior. So I told her she's free to do whatever she
wants with her money, but that she had came to me for advice, and my advice
is to not buy that video card.

- Oliver

(Yeah, she bought the video card in the end; and she still doesn't play
computer games.)

 

[Martin Gregorie]

I don't think there's any call to be mean to people, but I find it
highly grating when someone shows up on a newsgroup (mailing list, web
board) and demands answers when they clearly have made zero effort
themselves.

If someone makes a polite request, I'm much more interested in helping
them.

Agreed. One thing that's guaranteed to make me to ignore the post is if
it ends with any variant of "[please] answer immediately".

I'd suggest that, please or no please, that is rude in any culture or
language unless it comes from one of your bosses.

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

Agreed. One thing that's guaranteed to make me to ignore the post is
if it ends with any variant of "[please] answer immediately".

I'd suggest that, please or no please, that is rude in any culture
or language unless it comes from one of your bosses.

One thing that's often annoying to experienced participants, but
probably seems perfectly reasonable to the person asking for help, is
a request to answer by personal email, rather than on the list. They
may even feel they are helping to reduce traffic.

Most experienced posters prefer to keep things on-list. One, it
relieves them of the burden of feeling obligated to follow the
question to its bitter end. Two, it gets more eyes on the problem as
well as the proposed solution. Three, typically the conversation is
archived so that it is searchable on the web, allowing others to
search on the question and find an answer without ever needing to ask.

Personally, if someone asks for an email response, I simply ignore the
post. They're probably not checking back with the group, and I'm not
about to get involved by emailing them personally. (Maybe this is
akin to "not making eye contact" with people you expect to be pushy or
off-balance.)

 

[Roedy Green]

Personally, if someone asks for an email response, I simply ignore the
post

The other problem is more often than not, the email will bounce.

Discussion is for the benefit of everyone.

 

[Roedy Green]

She
showed me the specs she was considering.

Nearly always the person is not really asking advice. They just want
your stamp of approval on what they have already decided to do. That
way they can blame YOU if it does not work out.

This reminds me of something I discovered about human nature. I was in
charge of acquiring a large number of microfiche viewers for the BC
Hydro gas division. I thought it would be useful to ask all the
vendors to bring their models in for a day so we could test them side
by side, and the people who would actually use them could try them out
and vote on them.

To my surprise the clear winner was the most expensive model, even
though it was quite average in every respect I could see. My boss
said, "You made a big mistake, Roedy. You should not have posted the
prices on them. People automatically vote for the most expensive."
Naively, I expected users to factor in value to their choice, or at
least to go for the highest quality.

I later discovered that as a computer retailer there were people who
always wanted the most expensive of everything, even when the quality
was worse or when the extra cost features were useless to them. I
particularly remember one guy just about heart broken when he had to
settle for the second most expensive monitor simply because most
expensive ones were out of stock.

Stereo shopping for me was always a frustrating experience. I want
one with almost no controls. I like to operate it in the dark. Stereo
salesmen were always trying to sell gimmicky features that would just
get it the way of routine use.

 

[Danno]

One of my more memorable experience with "Linux snobs" was when I had
asked help for a networking driver. I had downloaded a driver off the
internet, put it on a floppy diskette, loaded it onto the linux machine, and
then checked out the readme. It said to compile the drivers using "gcc"
followed by 3 lines worth of command line arguments (at around 80 characters
per line, that's 240 characters worth of command line arguments).

So I type in the command exactly like I see it (except I ignored the
newlines, and uses spaces instead), only to have gcc tell me that one of the
flags I provided (e.g. "-foo") was no longer supported. There was no
suggestion of what flag I should use instead, and simply omitting the flag
yielded even more cryptic and dangerous sounding error messages.

So I during that period (a couple of years ago, while I still had the
exact command line I entered, and the exact error messages I got), whenever
I found out someone was an "experienced" Linux user, I'd ask them if they
knew how to solve my problem. One of the answers I got was "If you're too
stupid to use a compiler, you shouldn't be using Linux."
Damn!


Now here's the real shocker: this wasn't in an online newsgroup or
mailing list. He had said this to me, in person, to my face. We were both
computer science students at the same university, attending the same class.
In fact, he was my partner for a project in which we were writing a RPG in
Java. I had designed the finite state machine interfaces that he had to
implement to allow for the transition between my "overworld map" engine to
his "monster battle" engine. We got the highest grade possible for the
project (an A). Either he was saying that for all compilers, I was too
stupid to use them (and thus too stupid to use Linux); or he was saying that
if there exists a compiler for which I am too stupid to use, I would also be
too stupid for Linux. Both interpretations didn't make sense to me.

I was stunned by his response, so our conversation had ended there. The
next days, we'd continue to meet up and work on the project, but we never
brought up the topic of Linux again.


This article links to a blog entry in which someone claims that people
who say "RTFM" do so because they don't know the answer and wish to sound
smart. In my experience, when someone doesn't know the answer, they tend to
simply not respond, letting someone else give it a stab. Every now and then
in this group, you'll see someone ask a very obscure question, and they
receive zero responses; I suspect because no one knows the answer.

I actually take pride in saying "I don't know". Not here on USENET of
course, since that would just waste bandwidth. I just don't like the
idea of having bullshitting someone so they can take that info and
waste their time with it.

 

[Chris Smith]

The article also links to other sites which criticize Eric Steven
Raymond, and from that, infer that the "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"
document (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) is "bad". This
is known as an "ad hominem" attack, and is a logical fallacy.

It's called an ad hominem when a personal attack is used to refute an
argument. However, the fact that Eric Raymond is a jerk [yes, I said
"fact", and intentionally so] is actually quite relevant when the issue
at hand is whether to suggest that people go read his advice. The
points made by the articles you're talking about are:

1. Eric Raymond writes stuff that's insulting and demeaning.

2. Eric Raymond is at best on the fringes of open source software
developers, and does not represent a typical member of that community.

3. Eric Raymond cares less about the accuracy of what he writes than
about his ability to promote himself while writing it.

4. Eric Raymond has a tendency to intentionally provide inaccurate
information for political and other personal reasons.

I can't see how any of the above four statements are irrelevant to
evaluating whether to recommend his writing to others.

I've read the smart-questions document, and while I don't agree with
everything it says, I believe that a person who blindly follows the
rules there will probably get better results than a person who
willingly breaks all of the rules.

For the most part, yes. However, I think it's also an important
question to ask whether people on this newsgroup really wish to say the
things that are said in that document. For example, do we wish to claim
that "we" (which transfers to mean this newsgroup, when someone reaches
the document via the newsgroup) unapologetically intend to be hostile
and rude if we don't think someone's done enough thinking before
posting? I certainly don't want to say that, and I don't want other
people saying on my behalf. If some particular person wants to say that
about themselves, then by all means they have the right to say it... but
for ****'s sake please don't imply that I'm included in some nebulous
"we" that likes to act that way.

That's why I don't like seeing links posted to the Eric's "smart
questions" document. There is some good advice in the document, but
that's outweighed in my mind by the document being morally offensive.

Every now and then I get surprised by what people find insulting.

Perhaps I've just surprised you again.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Ed Kirwan]

Monique Y. Mudama wrote:

I think this might be in part a cultural thing. I've noticed that a
lot of the posts that come off as incredibly rude or demanding seem to
be written by people for whom English is not the first language, and
who don't seem to live in the Americas or Western Europe. That group
also seems to favor using textspeak abbreviations ('u' for 'you', '2'
for 'to', etc), which seems to drive a lot of people up the wall,
fairly or not.

"Someone," should write a filter and ask people to pass their questions
through the filter before posting. This filter would replace phrases
like, "GIVE ME AN ANSWER IMMEDIATELY!!!!" with, "If you have any time,
I'd be extremely grateful for your thoughts on the matter;" "WHY IS THIS
NOT WORKING?!?!?!?!?!?" with, "Do you have any suggestions about how I
could find out what's wrong?"; "u r a dickHead," with, "I fully respect
your opinion but I'm afraid I disagree;" "Can you suggest an IDE?" with,
"Please don't read this email, and if you have already, then please
don't reply;" "JAVA SUCKS COMPARED TO C++; IT'S SO GOD-AWFUL SLOW!!!!!"
with, "Hi, I've just started programming Java after spending a few weeks
programming in C++. For the life of me, I can't accept that the two
languages are different things, and so just see Java as a malformed
version of C++; I also think that, if I write enough posts, everyone
will see that I'm right, and a great wave of justice will sweep Java
from the land, replacing it with the C++ that I know and love. Thanks, bye!"

 

[Philipp Leitner]

I think this might be in part a cultural thing. I've noticed that a
lot of the posts that come off as incredibly rude or demanding seem to
be written by people for whom English is not the first language, and
who don't seem to live in the Americas or Western Europe. That group
also seems to favor using textspeak abbreviations ('u' for 'you', '2'
for 'to', etc), which seems to drive a lot of people up the wall,
fairly or not.

you may be right with that, but I am not so sure whether it is really a
"cultural thing" ... I think they sometimes just don't know the English
language good enough to see how insulting and impolite they sound; but I
do agree that sentences containing "u re asshole" or so (like the ones
posted just recently by hardik on this list, can't find the actual mail)
cannot be justified by bad english.

Anyway, being stupid is definitely /not/ limited to countries outside of
Western Europe and Northern America :-/ We can see that every day in on
the news shows .

/philipp

 

[Oliver Wong]

The article also links to other sites which criticize Eric Steven
Raymond, and from that, infer that the "How To Ask Questions The Smart
Way"
document (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) is "bad".
This
is known as an "ad hominem" attack, and is a logical fallacy.

It's called an ad hominem when a personal attack is used to refute an
argument. However, the fact that Eric Raymond is a jerk [yes, I said
"fact", and intentionally so] is actually quite relevant when the issue
at hand is whether to suggest that people go read his advice. The
points made by the articles you're talking about are:

1. Eric Raymond writes stuff that's insulting and demeaning.

2. Eric Raymond is at best on the fringes of open source software
developers, and does not represent a typical member of that community.

3. Eric Raymond cares less about the accuracy of what he writes than
about his ability to promote himself while writing it.

4. Eric Raymond has a tendency to intentionally provide inaccurate
information for political and other personal reasons.

I can't see how any of the above four statements are irrelevant to
evaluating whether to recommend his writing to others.

It might have been relevant if one had made the general recommendation
to read Eric Raymond's reading, but I don't think it's so relevant in the
case where I'm recommending one specific document, which I have personally
read through, and felt was "mostly" good advice.

So for example, the fact(?) that Eric Raymond has written stuff which is
insulting, demeaning, factually inaccurate, and/or with political bias,
doesn't change the fact that I think this one particular document, which
incidentally was written by Eric Raymond, contains good advice.

For the most part, yes. However, I think it's also an important
question to ask whether people on this newsgroup really wish to say the
things that are said in that document. For example, do we wish to claim
that "we" (which transfers to mean this newsgroup, when someone reaches
the document via the newsgroup) unapologetically intend to be hostile
and rude if we don't think someone's done enough thinking before
posting? I certainly don't want to say that, and I don't want other
people saying on my behalf. If some particular person wants to say that
about themselves, then by all means they have the right to say it... but
for ****'s sake please don't imply that I'm included in some nebulous
"we" that likes to act that way.

I agree that the document had too much of an "us versus them" feel to
it. Maybe someone should/could write a similar document which omits this.

- Oliver

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

you may be right with that, but I am not so sure whether it is
really a "cultural thing" ... I think they sometimes just don't know
the English language good enough to see how insulting and impolite
they sound; but I do agree that sentences containing "u re asshole"
or so (like the ones posted just recently by hardik on this list,
can't find the actual mail) cannot be justified by bad english.

I definitely agree with the latter point. For knowing the English
language well enough ... maybe. Maybe. The fact is that I rarely see
posters from western European countries using that tone, even when
English is clearly not their first language. Maybe their languages
are simply close enough to English that it comes across better.

Anyway, being stupid is definitely /not/ limited to countries
outside of Western Europe and Northern America :-/ We can see that
every day in on the news shows .

Sure, but I certainly didn't mean to suggest that I think people from
other cultures/locations are stupid. Not at all. And I have
absolutely seen demanding and rude newsgroup posts clearly written by
native English speakers in the US. No one has the monopoly on
rudeness.

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

That's why I don't like seeing links posted to the Eric's "smart
questions" document. There is some good advice in the document, but
that's outweighed in my mind by the document being morally
offensive.

I guess I'm a serious offender, then. I'm sorry that it bugs you.
I still think it's the best "how to get an answer from a newsgroup"
document out there, though, and I'll continue to leave it in my sig.

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

So for example, the fact(?) that Eric Raymond has written stuff
which is insulting, demeaning, factually inaccurate, and/or with
political bias, doesn't change the fact that I think this one
particular document, which incidentally was written by Eric
Raymond, contains good advice.

He has a geek guide to sex out there somewhere. Entertaining stuff,
although possibly not for the intended reasons. I would not go
linking it in a sex help newsgroup.

I agree that the document had too much of an "us versus them"
feel to it. Maybe someone should/could write a similar document
which omits this.

Well, it wasn't conceived as a guide for how to ask questions in a
computer language newsgroup ... It was conceived as a way to help open
source newbies bridge the gap between themselves and the people who
could help them. Particularly in the context of the linux world
several years ago, it is an attempt to help both groups by 1) cutting
down on the number of posts that would never result in a useful
answer, thereby just cluttering the landscape and 2) provide newbies
with a step by step guide on how to get the answers they want.

I look at quotes like this:

"So, while it isn't necessary to already be technically competent to
get attention from us, it is necessary to demonstrate the kind of
attitude that leads to competence . alert, thoughtful, observant,
willing to be an active partner in developing a solution. If you can't
live with this sort of discrimination, we suggest you pay somebody for
a commercial support contract instead of asking hackers to personally
donate help to you."

And I don't think "insulting" -- I think "sensible." Taking offense
to this is like taking offense to someone informing you that it's bad
manners to eat your steak with your hands at a formal banquet.

The computing world has changed so much. I realized this the other
day at a local office supply store. The kid at the checkout counter
noticed the Tux penguin on my shirt and asked to read the back. The
back was a quote, I believe from Linus, saying something to the effect
of, "The linux philosophy is live dangerously. No, wait, that's not
it. Do it yourself, that's what it is."

The kid read it with the most puzzled expression, then looked at me
and said, "I don't get it." I stared at him. We both run debian
(although he pronounced it dee-bee-un, which I hope is not the correct
pronunciation). A distro known for being fairly expert. And he had
no idea why anyone would say something like that.

Having started to use linux at a time when I had to bribe more
knowledgeable CS folks with pizza to dehose my computer, and in which
it was common knowledge that "you don't really know linux until the
first time you destroy your system and have to install from scratch,"
(a philosophy I had opportunity to test) ... well, wow.

And to be honest, I kind of resented it. Kids these days! Why, in my
day, we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get our RedHat CDs!
We didn't have apt to do all our package finding for us! Only a member
of the elite could figure out how to configure a sound or network card,
and that's the way we liked it, by golly!

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

I guess I'm a serious offender, then. I'm sorry that it bugs you.
I still think it's the best "how to get an answer from a newsgroup"
document out there, though, and I'll continue to leave it in my sig.

It has some very good points on how to get help (no, "it doesn't work"
is NOT a bug report) *and* also how to deal with socially challenged
people with important information

What I don't want it to be taken as is a guide on how to look like
you are a hacker. I have encountered people who seem to think that
the "Dealing with rudeness" shows how hackers should behave (rather
than "How to answer questions in a helpful way"). I guess we should
just cheerish the people who are both knowledgable and civil

/L

 

[Chris Smith]

I guess I'm a serious offender, then. I'm sorry that it bugs you.
I still think it's the best "how to get an answer from a newsgroup"
document out there, though, and I'll continue to leave it in my sig.

I expected no different. It's just worth mentioning, is all.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[hiwa]

That's why I don't like seeing links posted to the Eric's "smart

questions" document. There is some good advice in the document, but
that's outweighed in my mind by the document being morally offensive.

Does anyone know, or have written, a much much shorter and decent
version of the Smart Question document? A simple itemized list might
be better and it should include an SSCCE clause.