Re: FreeBSD-newbies group is a compromise community.

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To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:11:18 +0100

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Good morning,

Jamie, that is absolutely wrong to say that you didn't want to bother the
gurus and wizs. Everyone of those people, which you prefer to call gurus and
wizs, one time in a galaxy far far away were newbies like you, they stumbled
upon the same problems like you do nowadays as newbie. I would not prefer to
use such terms to highlight someone's knowledge. My experience from general
linux mailing lists is that members usually do sort themselves in some kind
of classes (user, power user, guru - use any terms you like). And this cause
that someone who is calling himself a newbie might get ignored by someone who
is calling himself as guru, just for this simple reason that he is guru and
that is too demeaning for him to answer this (from his point of view) simple
and easy question. The -question mailing list is just for asking tech support
questions no matter how simple or how complicated they seem to be. On
- -questions there are many people willing to help. And it looks like that
FreeBSD users are more grown up than linux users (my subjective opinion -
many of the linux so called gurus are still living in the opinion that they
are the best, they know everything because they don't use that redmond
operating system, so they see themselves as some kind of ueber-men..), so
they will answer, or at least try to shown the direction how to solve this or
that. If you ask for tech support here on -newbies list of course you might
get the right answer, but risk of getting less accurate answer here is more
higher than in -questions list.
You are saying that plenty of folks on -questions are getting flamed.. well I
have not seen this for quite time now (maybe I am not paying lot of attention
to list), but it is always nice to see that person asking for help did at
least some research on his own (reading log files, trying google.. "in google
non est, ergo non est"). Sometimes I see questions like "my proftpd server
stopped to work, please help" and those are the questions when I feel like I
need a crystall ball to find out what happened to the proftpd. Please don't
get me wrong. I always try to help, no matter how stupid or easy question
seems to be. I was new to world of FreeBSD once too (and I am still - maybe I
am good in ipfw traffic shaping, maybe I lack any experience at all in bind9
matters etc.), and I needed (and sometimes I need) the same kind of help you
asking for now. What I hate is the guru-like approach like "rtfm! man
make.conf". That is too childish. Remember that the most stupid questions are
those which we are never about to ask. Enjoy and explore that nice world of
FreeBSD and its possibilities.

cheers,
Martin

On Fri March 19 2004 05:43, Jamie wrote:
> Sorry, I should have read the charter. I didn't want to bother the
> gurus and wizards with what I thought might be a question which would come
> from someone inexperienced, and title "newbies" *sounded* like a good
> place to ask it. I was just judging it by the name of the group, and not
> by the charter, so thats how I made my mistake. To me, newbies sounds like
> a haven for those whose asbestos underwear are away at the laundromat. Had
> I read the charter, I wouldn't have posted in newbies.
>
> I see plenty of folks in freebsd-questions getting flamed for not reading
> the manual, when I think in fact many of them are so inexperienced
> that they aren't aware of just where the manual they need is yet, or
> whether the additional manual they need even exists. A lot of questions
> are probably even ignored because people read the questions and think to
> themselves "I won't answer this - the guy hasn't read the manual, or he
> doesn't have a clue what is going on". Sometimes the person with the
> question may have read the manual but misunderstood it, or could not
> locate the relevant docs.
>

- --
:
:. kind regards
:.. Martin Hudec
:.:
:.: =w= http://www.aeternal.net
:.: =m= +421.907.303393
:.: =@= corwin@aeternal.net
:.:
:.: "When you want something, all the universe
:.: conspires in helping you to achieve it."
:.: - The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
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