Rudeness and How To Interpret Answers was Re: Flame retardant (long)
Rudeness and How To Interpret Answers was Re: Flame retardant (long)
- Subject: Rudeness and How To Interpret Answers was Re: Flame retardant (long)
- From: "Erik M. Buck" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 18:11:02 -0500
What are you talking about ? I have seen no flaming here recently. Many
people who post and then complain are either too sensitive or too rude.
Everyone: please read
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
so that we all know how to ask smart questions.
Nobody is blaming beginners simply for being beginners. Sometimes people
post RTFM in answer to questions readily answered by the documnetation that
is already on the poster's computer. I have not read name calling,
hysterics, or even overt rudeness in this forum in a long time. Maybe I am
skipping over the offensive posts ? In any event, this is a technical forum
and people who can not stand terse technical answers and the occasional RTFM
may need a different forum. I don't excuse rudeness, vulgarity, or name
calling, and as I say, I have not seen that. An RTFM response is not rude.
<Quote>
Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with
what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're
reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.
What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling
to think or do their own homework before asking questions. People like that
are time sinks - they take without giving back, they waste time we could
have spent on another question more interesting and another person more
worthy of an answer. We call people like this "losers" (and for historical
reasons we sometimes spell it "lusers").
We realize that there are many people who just want to use the software we
write, and have no interest in learning technical details. For most people,
a computer is merely a tool, a means to an end; they have more important
things to do and lives to live. We acknowledge that, and don't expect
everyone to take an interest in the technical matters that fascinate us.
Nevertheless, our style of answering questions is tuned for people who do
take such an interest and are willing to be active participants in
problem-solving. That's not going to change. Nor should it; if it did, we
would become less effective at the things we do best.
We're (largely) volunteers. We take time out of busy lives to answer
questions, and at times we're overwhelmed with them. So we filter
ruthlessly. In particular, we throw away questions from people who appear to
be losers in order to spend our question-answering time more efficiently, on
winners.
If you find this attitude obnoxious, condescending, or arrogant, check your
assumptions. We're not asking you to genuflect to us - in fact, most of us
would love nothing more than to deal with you as an equal and welcome you
into our culture, if you put in the effort required to make that possible.
But it's simply not efficient for us to try to help people who are not
willing to help themselves. If you can't live with this sort of
discrimination, we suggest you pay somebody for a commercial support
contract instead of asking hackers to personally donate help to you.
<End Quote>
<Quote>
How To Interpret Answers
RTFM and STFW: How To Tell You've Seriously Screwed Up
There is an ancient and hallowed tradition: if you get a reply that reads
"RTFM", the person who sent it thinks you should have Read The F*cking
Manual. He is almost certainly right. Go read it.
RTFM has a younger relative. If you get a reply that reads "STFW", the
person who sent it thinks you should have Searched The F*cking Web. He is
almost certainly right. Go search it.
Often, the person sending either of these replies has the manual or the web
page with the information you need open, and is looking at it as he types.
These replies mean that he thinks (a) the information you need is easy to
find, and (b) you will learn more if you seek out the information than if
you have it spoon-fed to you.
You shouldn't be offended by this; by hacker standards, he is showing you a
rough kind of respect simply by not ignoring you. You should instead thank
him for his grandmotherly kindness.
...
Dealing with rudeness
Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give
offence. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit
communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about
solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy.
When you perceive rudeness, try to react calmly. If someone is really acting
out, it is very likely that a senior person on the list or newsgroup or
forum will call him or her on it. If that doesn't happen and you lose your
temper, it is likely that the person you lose it at was behaving within the
hacker community's norms and you will be considered at fault. This will hurt
your chances of getting the information or help you want.
On the other hand, you will occasionally run across rudeness and posturing
that is quite gratuitous. The flip-side of the above is that it is
acceptable form to slam real offenders quite hard, dissecting their
misbehavior with a sharp verbal scalpel. Be very, very sure of your ground
before you try this, however. The line between correcting an incivility and
starting a pointless flamewar is thin enough that hackers themselves not
infrequently blunder across it; if you are a newbie or an outsider, your
chances of avoiding such a blunder are low. If you're after information
rather than entertainment, it's better to keep your fingers off the keyboard
than to risk this.
(Some people assert that many hackers have a mild form of autism or
Asperger's Syndrome, and are actually missing some of the brain circuitry
that lubricates `normal' human social interaction. This may or may not be
true. If you are not a hacker yourself, it may help you cope with our
eccentricities if you think of us as being brain-damaged. Go right ahead. We
won't care; we like being whatever it is we are, and generally have a
healthy skepticism about clinical labels.)
<End Quote>
----- Original Message -----
From: <email@hidden>
To: <email@hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 5:27 PM
Subject: Flame retardant
>
Jesper Nilsson wrote (in a message otherwise irrelevant to this):
>
|Im new to this low-level stuff. So please spare me the flaming.
>
>
OK, people. When newbies are saying things like this, there's *way* too
much criticism going on. Shall we all stop condemning beginners simply for
being beginners? (And, yes, I know full well that it's a small minority
doing the flaming.)
>
>
Glen Fisher
>
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