From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed May 3 3:49:29 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 521C937BBAE for ; Wed, 3 May 2000 03:49:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from localhost (jkh@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id DAA20804; Wed, 3 May 2000 03:49:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" , "Daniel J. Zaccariello" , John Papalia , Jeremiah Gowdy , smkelly@slashnet.org, insane@lunatic.oneinsane.net, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Attitudes towards newbies (was Re: FreeBSD and IRC) In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 03 May 2000 15:57:11 +0530." <20000503155711.A754@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 03:49:53 -0700 Message-ID: <20801.957350993@localhost> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > This is most definitely on topic: it concerns early experiences of > many new users in support, which will affect whether they choose > to start using the system or not, and whether they will in turn > advocate it to others. I hardly see what IRC, a medium which the FreeBSD project does not control or endorse in any way, has to do with the question of "providing support for newbies." > More than that, this whole thread speaks of the attitudes of the > senior members of the project: if newbies make mistakes, it's ok to > walk all over them and it's all their fault. No, the senior members of the project (those which actually care, anyway) simply feel that getting your advice from the equivalent of the street corner is not likely to be a winning prospect. We have mailing lists for this and enforce our own rules of etiquette on them. Anything else is entirely at your own risk and not really a topic for advocacy@freebsd.org unless you want to share details of a particularly successful method for advocating FreeBSD. > And why is it buried in the FAQ? Nobody has bothered to write any wording for the support section. > Why make that "first language" statement? Apart from sounding > condescending, are you suggesting that only English speakers should > use the system? No, I was making the point that only someone who clearly did not understand english could possibly interpret a statement of "don't go here for tech support" as "you can sometimes go here for tech support." > I could go on and on, but since you claim this is not "on-topic", I'll > say exactly why it's on-topic for me. We're planning to get a few new > systems. That's fine. But if you attempt to get your support on IRC, you'll still have problems. That's the only point I've *EVER* tried to make here and if you're somehow reading into this a hatred of newbies in general then you're hallucinating wildly. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message