Re: A message to the group from LinuxForum.com

From: Circuit Breaker (bagboy6437_at_shipaol.com)
Date: 05/02/04 

Date: Sun, 02 May 2004 09:17:10 -0400

Mike Bothwell wrote:

> Sybren Stuvel wrote:
>
>> Eric, don't pay attention to this person. He's never here to help other
>> people, and only barges in to insult a few of us. His opinion of this
>> group is that we are a bunch of elitists that think the whole world
>> should bow to our biddings. Well, nothing is further from the truth - at
>> least for the people he mentioned. We keep telling that he's wrong about
>> this, but he seems unable of believing us. The facts: we help loads of
>> people in this group, and he only whines about our behaviour.
>>
> Defense seems unnecessary, if it is lies.

Lies or not, if someone challenges my good name, I'd have to defend it
just as Sybren does. I don't see where you think he's been elitist; I
can understand your views of P.T. Breuer, because I used to think the same
way of that individual. However, after getting to know Peter, and more or
less studying the way he responds to people, I really don't think Peter
intends to come off the way most people here read him... after all, he's
British ;-)

And I thought he was French or Spanish or something for the longest time...
 
>> Bull***.
>
> Very mature response.

Why not quote your rather immature accusation alongside his response so
that other readers can see the context in which his response was offered.
Here, I'll save you the trouble:

Mike said:
>>> You are targeted because you didn't read and follow the rules, and
>>> this NG's police will jump all over your arse for what ever possible
>>> reason they can find.

Sybren replied:
>> Bull***.

Mike countered:
> Very mature response.

You see, I agree with Sybren. Your accusation is akin to bovine crap. Or
Bull***, whichever you prefer. There are those people who do sometimes
rough up our newbies a little too much, but most times I see that, I see
that the person doing the roughing is someone I've never heard of. The
regulars in here, as far as I have seen, are quite friendly and helpful.
There are those who get tired of answering the same question over and over
and who have noticed that most n00bsters don't even bother to check Google
first, if they know it even exists, when Google would provide them with as
many answers to the question "How do I log on as root in Mandrake 10.0" as
they can handle. There is a FAQ posted regularly, as is information on
posting "smart questions", with links to usenet ettiquette, etc.

It makes perfect sense, and is perfectly acceptable to expect or even
demand, that when someone enters a medium to which they are unaccustomed,
that they "listen" first, to gain an understanding of the social order in
that medium. When you buy a CB radio, typically you listen for a little
while before you talk. That way you know what is "cool" to say, like
"breaker breaker one nine" as opposed to "mayday mayday mayday". You
eventually learn that Channel 9 is for emergencies, channel 19 for road
trips and truckers, and so forth. If you "break the rules", you're likely
to get similar responses. Although drowned out by background noise and
static and overmodulation festivals, but you get the idea. It's not much
different in usenet. Listen first. I've never been to a bar or dance
club, but I would imagine that they have sets of what they consider to be
acceptable behaviour. In some clubs you might get away with copping a
feel where in others you'll get shot for same. Regardless, if I
ever do go to a club, you can rest assured I'll be going with a
close friend who has been to several, or, that I'll lurk around for
a while first to get the idea of what they accept.

Usenet is just another example, so it makes logical sense that people
should lurk and listen before opening their electronic mouths. If they
did that, they would know about google, they would know how to log in as
root, they would know how to edit fstab, etc.... Most of what I learned
I learned not by asking, but by reading /other/ people having asked in
times past. Before I came to Usenet, I already knew about Google, and I
milked it for all it was worth. I think Google might even have been how I
found out about Usenet.

When one of the regulars tells someone to go read a man page or search
google for any of the tens of thousands of hits available, 95% of the
time, they're justified in so doing. Some questions are simply answered
all over google, like getting a Lucent Winmodem to work, or setting up a
masqueraded network, or Hell, even how to fricken log in as root in
Mandrake 10.0. And many of those questions are answered by manual pages
that are already on the inquirer's system. For example, I learned how to
mount a Windows NT share via Samba by reading man pages and googling.
Mostly man pages. man mount, I believe. Or was it man fstab?
Regardless, many questions are already answered.

So you may say, "that still doesn't justify their rudeness". Who are we
to say if someone is being rude? We can't hear their tone of voice here,
which is where the majority of non-physical communication resides. Our
words may look rude, but I assure you that very very few if ANY people in
here are deliberately rude, ESPECIALLY to n00bs. We're not here to run
them off, we're here to help them, and if the best way to help them is to
tell them that Google and man pages exist for a reason, then so be it.
Unfortunately, even purely formal writing can appear rude when it indeed
is not. It's just a curse of language that we'll have to learn to deal
with. 

-- 
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