Patrick Dughi wrote:
>
> This is a long one. If you haven't the endurance just hit 'delete'.
Chuckle.
> now... about flaming...
>
> I've been around for a little bit, and least-a-ways as far as
> circle goes, I was a newbie once. Though I can't remember it, I'm sure I
> asked some silly questions - but I also know I've never been quoted
> "RTFFAQ", "RTFM", or even "RTFC". This isn't because I have read the FAQ
> (at the time, I had simply perused it - enough to know if what I was
> posting was covered by it or not), or was some code-boy whizkid. I lurked
> on the list for a while, long enough to recoginize the major players, long
> enough to know where the code repositories were, and long enough to
> familiarize myself with the code so that if I asked a question then I'd
> get back an answer that I could understand and apply.
I think everyone asks silly questions when you start on something new
(or things that more experienced think is obvious) Lurking definetly
helps, you get to know who really know's things and who doesn't.
> It's not that the list changed, or is becoming eliteist. It's not
> even that we're treating people with less-than-perfect english language
> skills poorly (I don't feel we are, but we do point out that we can't
> understand them when we can't actually, understand them - we do the same
> thing to people who post and are apparently english/american to start!).
My experience shows that it's actually young americans that appear to
have the daftest questions. But there's a change in society with all
the communication available it's easier to write an email than look it
up. Happens everywhere, choice ask a friend or look in a book. I think
it's a change for the worse, means that people aren't so independant.
Perhaps it's the increase in computer courses, Hey I just wrote a hello
world program in scheme, that means I can program a mud, happens
everywhere, be glad you don't do LPC, on them you have to teach wizards
how to code in LPC, which can be amusing.
> After a while, the deluge of identical questions, or requests for
> code/patches, the demonstrated inability to fix even the most basic or
> common of errors is disheartening to those of us who DO know what to do.
> In a nutshell, it pisses us off to have to do real work to help someone
> who doesn't care enough about it to do it themselves, and even more so
> when they repeat that behavior.
It happens on every list, newsgroups are worse though...
> if (new_circlemud_admin) {
> if(understanding_of_C < reasonable_time_and_effort ||
> understanding_of_circle < reasonable_time_and_effort) {
> REMOVE_FROM_LIST(new_circlemud_admin,circle_mailing_list,next);
> }
> happy_days=TRUE;
> }
> (yeah, i'm bored and writing english-language-pseudocode)
Chuckle someone's bound to say there's a bug in that ;)
> Sorry if that shocks some of you, but I think if you're going to
> talk about a software distribution, you should at least know what's
> required to run it (code, and program structure). It's not enjoyable to
> most to deal with unintelligent questions about something that we've put
> alot of personal time and effort into - I'd rather not deal with this sort
> of situation altogether. Sometimes you throw the baby out with the
> bathwater. Better than potentially having dirty bathwater.
Well I'm off to build a house, no ideas where to start but I figure that
sticking some bricks with super glue will do. Bit like making a mud from
snippets and some hacks to get it all working :)
Chris
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