Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1999 18:55:07 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> Cc: sue@welearn.com.au (Sue Blake), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: desktop stupidity Message-ID: <9436.918010507@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 02 Feb 1999 19:53:30 %2B0200." <199902021753.TAA03724@ceia.nordier.com>
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> Bleah! Dealing resourcefully with one's own ignorance (aka learning)
> is a basic life skill, and people who find the process traumatic,
> or who need to thrust the responsibility onto others, need remedial
> counselling, not support groups for everything.
With all due deference to Sue, I have to chime in behind Robert here
and say that what Sue collectively refers to newbies are really
two distinct camps of people:
1. Those who are totally ignorant about FreeBSD and probably
Unix in general but are interested in learning new things
and don't mind getting their hands a little dirty in the
process.
2. Those who simply want to be on the bandwagon because they
think one scores major `1337n3ss' points by being a Linux or
FreeBSD user or they've got a small ISP or porn site they
just want to make work. They also know little or no Unix.
The difference in dealing with the two camps is like night and day.
The #1 camp folks are interested in trying things on their own and
only drop by IRC or -questions when they're really stuck and just need
a hint. They're also usually polite in asking their questions and
have great respect for those with the answers, taking care not to piss
them off by leaning too hard on them. Those types are a joy to help
since they generally have reasonable questions and also point up
places where the docs (which they read first) are lacking. I've
committed more than a few doc changes after talking to such folks and
some of them are also now developers, having passed through the seven
veils and all that to now become productive citizens in their own
right.
The #2 camp folks are, frankly, just a waste of biomass. They don't
want to read docs or exert any more than the most token effort and
they're not interested in making their own mistakes since they're also
not really interested in learning anything at all, being entirely
focused on the "reward" of being able to call oneself a FreeBSD user
at school recess the next day or getting that porn site up and
generating revenue. From these folks, you here constant comments to
the effect of (and I'm not paraphrasing) "Don't tell me to read the
docs, JUST ANSWER MY QUESTION!" and "I don't ever read the docs - docs
suck! I hate reading all that crap." They're usually anything but
polite and, in many cases, are suffering from such a fundamental clue
shortage due to having this kind of attitude about life in general
that helping them isn't even an option - after about the 4th round,
you realize that teaching your grandmother nuclear physics would
probably be a lot easier since each and every thing you say is just
being met with a stubborn "I don't understand - can't you just do it
for me? I'll give you a login." They don't listen and they really
don't want to, they just want free handouts for life.
I don't think that exerting any effort to help "newbies" in the #2
category is rewarding at all and I'd just as soon those folks learned
to play with guns and alcohol so as to take themselves out of the gene
pool as rapidly as possible. They also tarnish the reputation of
genuine newbies (in the Sue sense) since folks on IRC encounter so
many folks in the #2 category that the #1 category folks start
catching stray rounds and succumb to friendly fire. If Sue wants the
newbie community to succeed in general, she has to make it clear just
what segment of the "perceived newbie community" she's really aiming
to support and she needs to make sure it's well understood that the
#2 folks need to be given the old heave-ho, not help.
- Jordan
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