Just for the heck of it, I am going to throw my 2 cents in here. Choose your particular currency for its value.
I've been in and around the Asterisk community for some time now (approximately a year) and have seen the number of users increase almost exponentially. I know many of the most active contributors, and I think I'm at least known of, by most. I've seen people talking down to other people, and I mostly ignore it. You have to realize that even though we are a "community", any online community has its fair share of guru's. These guru's have spent the time to learn a particular system without nearly as many resource materials as there are available now. These people have spent possibly hundreds of hours learning the system through trial and error, and yes, I'm sure a fair amount of time spent on IRC asking questions, and having them answered. What I think the problem is, is that people expect not only to have their hands held by these people, but often they expect to be carried. There are many new users that install Asterisk (or attempt) and fail because they haven't read *any* of the introductory documentation. I realize that the documentation is not always 100% clear, but I find most of it to be quite good for what *is* there. The wiki is probably the most often referred to resource, along with a couple of key websites, which need to be referred to often. What I think irks the people who have "put their time in" is questions that can be *EASILY* answered with about 5 seconds worth of searching and googling. I can understand the frustration many new users find, as I've both seen it and experienced it, but these are things that *ANY* large community has. Have you ever spent time on a large newsgroup? You'll find much much worse than you find here. The trolling is quite low for a mailing list as large as Asterisk's. I think if time is spent doing a little bit of research and attempting to *understand*, and not just *get working*, this system we call Asterisk, and when asking a question, knowing it is an informed, educated question, you'll go much further to gain respect from the "guru's". I am no guru. I'm just a telecom newbie (currently completing my third year of telecommuncations technology) who just loves the possibilties Asterisk brings to my table. I can feel the new users pain with attempting to understand Asterisk. I still don't know many, many parts of it, but before I go asking a question in the IRC channel, or the mailing list, I *atleast* spend 5-10 minutes searching the mailing lists and the wiki. I think you'll find with a little bit of searching, that most of the most common elements of Asterisk are documented enough to a degree to get you most of the way there. If something doesn't make sense, really try and think of why it might not work, and ask an informed and educated question. You'll always have the people who say "go search Google" or "search the wiki". Of course that is what you should do, but I think if you spend the time trying to learn it on your own just a little bit before going and asking for your hand to be held, you'll find the community much friendlier and willing to help you when you need the help. If you've actually spent the time to read my post, wow :) Leif Madsen http://www.asteriskdocs.org _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users