On Monday 13 February 2006 16:42, Varadarajan V wrote: > I am new to linux. when I say new I mean I am not an expert > linux user. As a user who benefits from a list like this > I would like to say something. I never ask questions before > I do a search (not only in google) or as u say without Reading TFM. > I try to get the solution by myself all the time. I like linux a
See? This is the natural thing to do. I dont claim to be a linux guru. I too am a newbie to most things linux. I have learnt everything through Google, LUGs. I have hardly ever asked questions on forums, LUGs or IRC. Why? Well I simply feel Google is the fastest way of getting your answer. Thats human tendancy or atleast my way of thinking. But there are people who think otherwise. They think that instead of investing 5-10 mins in Googling their problem they would rather invest 20 mins in making a post at a forum / ML and waiting about 24 hours... It may / may not occur to them that Google is a great resource. Personally, I dont give RTFM to as many people as possible. I know reading man pages can be frustrating. You can spend 10 hours reading 100s of man pages and still end up with nothing (if you're new to linux). The online docs can also be poorly written. But it doesn't take too much effort to Google stuff. I think if the user doesn't show an effort in trying to solve your problem then he is bound to get a few RTFMs / Google it! replies or his post may get entirely ignored. See it was only today that we got a guy on IRC who asked what $obj->abc meant in PHP. We explained to him in detail what it meant. Can you guess what was his next question? He was asking how he could assign a value to that attribute. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to assign the value. We had to give him RTFM / Google it. Another clown wanted to install Media WIKI or something without a server. He had unzipped the files in "My Documents" and was opening up the index.php script in IE but he couldn't see Media WIKI functioning. All he saw was text code. Patience is surely a virtue. It wears thin when people don't want to invest their time in researching about their problems. I am willing to shut up but then there will be someone else who will give him RTFM/Google it ;) > answering his questions. What more is required for a user to > understand when his question is completely ignored? I dont like giving the cold shoulder to people. We are here for support. If we give the silent treatement to everyone who doesnt Google or Reads the manual or gives insufficient details then it wouldn't be right as some newbies dont even know how to post in a mailing list. I believe I was one of them some months back ;). > Always a person's thoughts are wrong and not the person himself. > Help him change his thoughts. We are far from judging a person. And yes I believe when most people say - "RTFM" or "Google it" they are trying to change his thoughts. -- Dinesh A. Joshi -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
