I'll somewhat agree with you on the lack of newbie support. When I was a
newbie, people weren't always willing to help me, but some were and that's
how I got to be where I am today. I'm not an expert, but I can usually
figure things out on my own now.
The lack of newbie tolerance stems from a couple of different reasons:
1) What starts as a simple question often ends up turning into a MUD
programming coaching session. Many newbies seem to fall into a "drowning
syndrome" where they latch onto someone who was willing to help them in the
past, until it reaches the point of annoyance and the coach begins to resent
the newbie and all following newbies. I was guilty of this at first as
well, and it took a few good RTFM to cure me.
The solution? There needs to be a balance between self paced learning
and help from an experienced coder. My advice to newbies would be to first
try to figure it out, and then ask for help. If you are able to get an
answer to your question, make sure you understand the answer and apply it to
other pieces of code in the future. EX: Asking about the same warning 10
times.. Quite likely, what causes the warning the first time would be the
same/similar thing that causes it the other 9 times. Except perhaps the
variable or function name has changed.
2) MUDs were not made with the intention of being easy to understand, nor
to teach coding. Granted, the best place to learn is to dig in, but you
need to have an understanding of how the language works before you could
possibly understand anything. EX: I don't go to France and expect to learn
French by talking to French people with no previous knowledge of French. If
I speak broken French and can get my point across, fine, but I don't expect
a French speaking person to teach me French just so I can converse with
them.
Solution? Definitely, go out an buy a book. I get the feeling that the
newbies who do buy books are buying over their head. Maybe they're buying C
reference books when they should be buying "Teach yourself C in 21 Days" by
Sams Publishing.
If I can help someone and I'm in the mood to help, I will. If newbies were
actually grasping the basic concepts of C, rather then asking to be coached
they would be tolerated more. There are really only a few basic concepts to
C, and if newbies took the time to understand them, they would realize that
they were guilty of cycling the same questions continuously. Not everyone
is guilty of this, but I feel quite a few are.
There needs to be some give and take on both sides, like in any good
relationship. Maybe a wee bit more tolerance too, but we can't be expected
to tolerate people who have established themselves as unsavable until they
show a little effort. My two cents.
- Chris (Cyberaktif)
-----Original Message-----
From: Circle Discussion List [mailto:CIRCLE@post.queensu.ca]On Behalf Of
Del Minturn
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 1998 6:57 PM
To: CIRCLE@post.queensu.ca
Subject: Re: [THREAD] Fairness in Circle WAS: Copyrights, ...
James Turner wrote:
>
The weakness of the CircleMUD community, IMO is the lack of support for
the newbie!
Even if all newbies go out and buy a C book (for beginners), read ALL
the docs that come with mud, read all the FAQ's, etc... They still will
not understand it. Even after messing with the code for quite some time,
I do have a lot better understanding of what is going on, but I still do
not know how to do a lot of things. The books do not tell me how to do
it, the code does not tell me how, the docs do not tell me how, and so
far I have not gotten anyone to show me how either. I quit asking
because so many out there feel they will write the code for me. Hell.. I
never asked anyone to WRITE IT.. I asked for help on HOW to write it.
Time and time again, you see statements like "I was afraid to ask
because I am a newbie". They still don't ask.
You probably think, thats what the newbie list is for. I have not seen a
single message, question, post in a few weeks. I posted my question
there, and started to get some help, but the person who started to help
never replied to my last. I think that if most of the people on here can
get rid of this attitude of RTFM/RTFC/RTFFAQ and get rid of the
attitudes that they will write the code for someone and tell them HOW to
do it vice write it for them, the person asking will LEARN how to write
the code and in turn will be MORE willing to help the next person down
the road. Right now more and more are developing the bad attitudes,
because that is all they get from people on this list. Granted there are
a few on this list that don't fall into this catagory, so if *YOU* do
not have these attitudes.. do not take it personally! or think that I am
saying *YOU* do.
One last note:
For all of you who think it is not fair, I suggest removing circleMUD
and write your own. I will bet there is only ONE out there that would be
able to do it. A few others would make an attempt at it and give up. The
rest would not even attempt.
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