Quote Originally Posted by user unknown
And sometimes you have to make the people read the manpages. It's not a silver bullet for a beginners forum, but dogmatically forbidding to claim 'rtfm' isn't correct too.
RTFM belongs to our culture.

And windows-bashing needs to occur from time to time too.
It's boring after all the years, but sometimes, I need it.
Oh, please! Save us the sanctimony. Rudeness is never appropriate or educational, and it's disingenuous to try to justify personal arrogance as "help". Sure, I've flamed people in the past (generally people who come in and start criticizing and acting boorish without even asking a sincere question), but, to my knowledge, I haven't ever done it to someone who sincerely wanted to learn, and I don't think I ever tried to justify it as being "for their own good". It's quite possible to educate people about helpful resources without being an ass.

And Flash00's criticisms about the available resources is quite valid. I try to sort through and do some rewriting when I get a chance, but some of it is just awful. Outdated information, fragmented all over the place, overly complicated "fixes" - a good portion of documentation purporting to address a particular issue is generally not at all helpful, or just flat wrong. I'd do more, except: (1) my knowledge is limited here, and I only try to address the issues where I feel some level of competency and experience (which means that I normally limit my contributions to newbie and Windows transition issues), and (2) some people get upset if you delete or rewrite what they wrote, even if it's confusing or outdated, and given how rare it is that anyone will add good documentation, you sure can't afford to offend them. Ideally, people would edit and update their own contributions as necessary. In sum, I guess it's difficult for me to accept the "culture" of RTFM, when there really isn't an available "FM" to be had! Sometimes it's an "FUM".

Funny thing, Ptarmigan and I actually participated in another thread a few days ago, talking about how Windows has a way of creating a sense of helplessness, and that it was actually refreshing to get back into an environment where you have the freedom to change the way a program runs if you want to. Not only is that difficult in Windows, but the most influential people spend millions of dollars to convince (they would say "educate") the users that this is morally wrong - even criminal! It's hacking after all!! After a few years, Windows users don't even realize that they've been brainwashed to be passive and helpless. In many ways, it's not only tolerated, but required that you do nothing without a wizard instructing you. I still remember times when I dared to pick a different install location for a Windows program, and all heck broke loose, then I couldn't even uninstall the mess, much less fix it. In the Windows world, the very idea of editing a program is likely a felony under the DMCA.

So, I can easily understand why people who have spent a long time in Linux cannot understand the helplessness of Windows immigrants. To the Linux oldtimers, it must be really hard to tolerate. All I can say is that it's not always laziness, stupidity or lack of initiative. Sometimes it's just a matter of not yet catching on to the freedom that Linux affords. And why should we get upset if a new user asks about the root password? To the Windows user, the whole concept is completely foreign. They deserve congratulation for even making it far enough to ask. Why should we take them to task for not understanding the "mount" command, when even Linux users agree that it's a stupid, useless artifact of an ancient era - outdated and unnecessary long before Windows was even conceived? The people who seek help come from Windows expecting to find an OS that's intuitive to new users - not one that's baffling even to people who are well-experienced in another OS. Is it their fault that Linux cannot meet that challenge?

Let's put the shoe on the other foot - how many experienced Linux users have ever had to use Windows, and found it so frustrating and baffling that they couldn't even make the simplest thing work - something like, say, opening or saving a file? How many of you actually had to search around and find a forum of Windows users, and cowtow and kiss butt to ask them such embarrassingly simple questions, only to be taken to task for not RTFMing all of the Windows documentation? And, for that matter, how many of you have actually taken the time to read all of the help and support pages in Windows, or read through the Microsoft Knowledge Base? And what if you did, and all the stuff from Windows 3.1 and 95 and Me was all jumbled up together with XP and 2000 by amateur writers, such that a good portion of the time, whatever you looked up won't work even if you went to all that trouble? Point is, the experienced Linux user, when suddenly put into a Windows environment, doesn't experience the same level of frustration and humiliation as the experienced Windows user who comes here.

On this forum, people from other countries post here, and their English is terrible, but does anyone take them to task and tell them to RTFD(ictionary)? And then justify it as part of a "culture"? Or "good for them"? Of course not. It's rude and uncalled for. Someone from Greece or Hungary who posts here in bad English doesn't owe me or anyone else here an apology, because they spoke well enough for me to understand, which is a damn sight better than I could ever imagine doing if I tried to speak Greek or Hungarian.

jd