Re: Using Ubuntu absolves the user of personal responsibility?

Hi,

Alexander Skwar wrote:
Gilles Gravier <Gilles@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
So Michael got the spirit of the response, though not the words. :)

No, Michael did NOT get the spirit of the message. He invented something,
as he's annoyed by me, or something like that.
Up to the "you moron" he had the spirit. Granted the last 2 words destroy the spirit as well.
I really think that in many cases, giving the immediate answer helps a lot.
Disagreement. It doesn't help, it's actually bad help, as people
might not understand what they're actually doing.
It's good that people disagree. It fosters discussion.
Eg. somebody might suggest to read the mail from root by doing

sudo rm -rf /
Practical jokers tend to get away with it one time... then nobody listens to them.

On the other hand, one could answer to that same "mount an ISO file" with "please google "horseback" and "dump"" and that would also lead the user on a useless treck.
If people get into the habbit to just copy'n'paste a command, they
might get hurt.
Agreed. Or in following blindly ANY kind of advice. See above example.
Let's be realistic, many of the Ubuntu users don't really WANT to be techies... Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings"... not for geeks.

Fine.

So don't try to make a geek out of every user who asks a question.

I don't.
But you try to make them an educated Linux user / admin (mount isn't for users, it's for admins)...
Those who want to be geeks, once they see the mount -t iso9660... answer will go and man mount to learn more.

Or they might not, as the command works right away. It's much more
straight forward, to point people to the documentation, so that they
can find out for themselves what to do.
If they want to learn, they will. If they don't want to, they won't. And if they are discourraged by having to go search for information somewhere on the web, they might remove Ubuntu and re-isntall Windows.
I think it is important that in the non geek population of people who try out Ubuntu (instead of Windows), we make their life easier... Not their study of Linux, some of them don't care, just as they don't care how the internals of Windows XP tick... so giving the immediate answer let's them continue happily with their test of Ubuntu (instead of giving them the message of "you can't find it by yourself, so go back to Windows" - which they might).
I did NOT give that message.
You did not INTEND to give that message. But think how the person who wrote the question felt when reading the answer? And look how many people interpreted it that way. (Not necessarily as "go back to Windows" but at least not feeling helped by the community as much as they could.)
We want more people on Linux... and yes, newbies as well. In fact, the more newbies on Linux, the more we get newbie questions that help us make Linux a more newbie and grandmother friendly operating system.
Hm. That might be VERY arguable if "we" really want that.

At least, it would let the user chose between user friendly admin, and command line admin... when Windows makes that choice hard.

No way am I going back to Yggdrasil.

Oh.... and... as Michael points out... if you do find a newbie question irritating, why not take a deep breath, and let somebody less irritated by it answer it. While I certainly find that when you go into details your posts here are extremely valuable, I would prefer less drama and

NOW: *I* did not make a drama here...

But your post generated a lot of drama from the group.
more direct help to the newer users. Let them learn at their pace.

I do let them learn at their pace. But I reserve the right to
point people to the documentation, if I know where the documentation
is.

Yes. Point them to the documentation... As I posted elsewhere, I would give the immediate answer and a more educational pointer to documentation in the same post. But different approaches from different people. I suspect we won't agree on this one.

Gilles (now going back home).

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