Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

A beginner's overview to applying a patch (just because people have been asking)

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Llorean:
That's the thing though: We want

1) New people to be told to read the documentation, so that they learn where the proper place to find things is.

2) Documentation that is not over your heads, so other people who feel it is shoul be improving it.

If people don't know to search the documentation, they should be told it at the first available opportunity, not handed an answer that is documented half the time, teaching them that they don't need to follow the rules but can ignore them and just get what they want anyway. I know it sounds harsh, but there's a lot of documentation covering common stuff and they need to learn to search it, otherwise they'll do like a few users have done and just post here anyway, and then when someone says "That's in the documentation" respond "If you're not going to help me, don't answer" or other similar things. It happens both here and IRC often enough.

Secondly, in regards to the documentation being over your head: Why don't you fix it? If you can simplify the language so that it's more readable, feel free. The documentation relating to this post is entirely in the wiki which means you can just go and fix it, right now.

Mikerman:
I kinda, sorta agree (yes, I often have typed "read the ****ing manual!" in a thread only to delete it before posting); at the same time, I also think that at times nowadays, the nature of human-ness is not adequately considered and taken into account (not focusing on RB).  For example, left-to-WPS just FEELS right ...

;)

And sometimes, info. is just missed in the documentation (I had two posts recently where I found the answer later after searching, but in the middle of Wiki pages where I had just missed the info.).  The forums certainly have a place (and I appreciate when people don't call me a dolt for not having found the info.).

I'll look at/consider the Wikis again.  The hesitancy there, at times, is the fear of "breaking" them and just plain getting things wrong (and feeling like a dolt for that)--forums feel less formal and so there's less a feeling in that regard there.  Maybe not the right mind-set, but I'm smart enough to know that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing ...  Perhaps many of us who didn't grow up with the spirit of Wikis need to be encouraged in that regard (if that's wanted).

Llorean:
People should always feel free to edit the wiki if they think they can improve it. It stores revisions if something is done wrong, and if you break it you can always paste the code from a previous revision, restore it, and try again.

But these forums are formal, at least as formal as the wiki (the rules are stricter). They're for discussion.

If people miss information in the wiki, that's fine, but they should generally be redirected back there. It's even okay to answer their question while saying "But the information was in the wiki, here, and the rules require you search it first" but they should never, ever, just skim the stickies looking for what they want, and then ask.

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