Unfriendly responses to newbie questions?

[radi0j0hn]

I spend a bit of time looking at forums for Linux, digital cameras and a few other tech topics.  I'm also the author of more than a dozen "how-to" tutorials that have been proaised in the US and UK.

I was shocked at the (frankly) snotty responses that some posters are getting from so-called experts here!

One person simply asked if their unit could use Rockbox.   A MODERATOR, a person who should be doing everything possible to promote use of the product, would NOT give an answer.  Instead, the poster was told that "we" prefer them to look it up on some list.

That's like stopping at the border of some state and asking directions and being told that "we" prefer you look it up on a map!

Message to Rockbox officials:  get a little less elite, or the word will get out that you are wrapped too tight and don't want to deal with new people.

[JdGordon]

we have enough users causing problems as it is, so scaring off one or two who would just cause more support headache later is no big deal.

[LambdaCalculus]

I don't understand how politely being asked to post information in our wiki corresponds to "unfriendly responses". Personally, I think both Chronon and Llorean were being very polite to you.

Now, if someone had said something like, "Hey loser, take that info and go stick it!", *then* I would call that unfriendly. But seeing as how that didn't happen, I don't know why you have to be so upset about.

[TexasRockbox]

I think perception has a lot to do with the the *perceived* attitude and the user's inability to adjust to a certain mindset.  I've been on the receiving end of what others would call "snotty" but I do understand that this is first and foremost a developer's forum and to keep it usable the "signal to noise" ratio has to be kept low for reasons:

1) Don't bog down the developers with endless questions already answered and documented (yet there are still plenty of these)
2) Keep the "chit-chat" to a bare minimum so that real information can be found.

Obviously the developers have gone to a lot of time and trouble to make information available for those inclined to look and read.  There is really a *ton* of information.  Like any project of this complexity sometimes the reference material conflicts or is out of date.  Making note of that situation is only fair -- but give specific examples so the information can be made correct and consistent.  Personally,if I was visiting an unfamiliar state or country I'd first look up what I'd want to do and how to get there without depending upon the memory of a local who just might not remember correctly or fully understand my language --  a sure recipe for getting lost and spawning a whole lot more questions.

I've been going on Rockbox for over a year and a half (fast approaching two years) and it works great and I usually find the information I need if I go digging around a bit.

Now having said all that maybe there is a place for a "newbie section" to ask all the repeated questions (i.e. when is iPod Classic supported) that could be answered by those not tired of repeating the same answer over and over and just clear it out every month or so, but, in doing so we might lose people in that section who never graduate out of it and learn the riches Rockbox has to offer -- if only they would look.

[Mikerman]

I have found the unfortunate, unnecessary rudeness of a moderator to turn forum nondevelopers off and cause them simply to give up and leave, as has been commented in the forums previously.  Perhaps not a big deal to some, it is sad to see and only hinders, not helps, even as to a nondeveloper and what he or she might bring.  In my humble opinion, it is just as easy to make a point helpfully.  But what do I know.   And hopefully this is/becomes limited.

[mason]

I too am a 'newbie' here, but have been around the repair,  programming, fixing, you name it block a lot of times.  I've joined lots of discussion groups for iPods, DVD players, Sony Minidisc players, VCR repair, dd-wrt firmware, etc, etc.
Some of these have established gurus with little patience for someone looking for an answer without having to plow through a million topics and attendant replies.  
On the whole, the search engines that newbies are referred to in these topics SUCK.  Newbies don't have much experience using them and their (and my) patience runs out very quickly.
So I implore those that sit on the high mountain of moderatorship and perceived experience, please be a little more tolerant of those that have yet to get up the ant hill of familiarity with the topics at hand.  Those that are developers ought to operate like much of the professional programming community: DON'T address the general public.  Let someone more tolerant of human frailties deal with them.  Right, you don't have the personnel, but at least realize the point.

Now that that is off my chest, I'm going to ask a newbie question I was unable to search an answer for.
There are some brands/variations of iPod batteries that don't charge under Rockbox for 5th gen video 30gb or 60gb using the USB cable, I find.  Is there some workaround? The manual's Menu button push doesn't work in these cases either.  In the Apple OS it does work, though.
Thanks for your patience I hope.
Mason

[saratoga]

On the whole, the search engines that newbies are referred to in these topics SUCK.  Newbies don't have much experience using them and their (and my) patience runs out very quickly.

The box on the left uses google.  If you don't know how to use google you probably shouldn't be using rockbox.

Now that that is off my chest, I'm going to ask a newbie question I was unable to search an answer for.

Post a new thread.

[bluebrother]

One person simply asked if their unit could use Rockbox.

Is it too much expecting people to actually follow our guidelines, which require you to check the website first? Which, in turn, holds the information (if Rockbox runs on some player) on it's very first page! Plus, every page holds a search box.

A MODERATOR, a person who should be doing everything possible to promote use of the product, would NOT give an answer.  Instead, the poster was told that "we" prefer them to look it up on some list.

That's the next big mistake. It's rather important to realize that Rockbox is NOT a product! That's a really important thing. Neither you nor any other user or even developer bought anything (except the physical hardware). No support, no "product", no "friendly customer forums". It's provided by the people who actually do the work. You are free to use it, but: you can't expect anything. If there is helpful support, if there is a nice software you are allowed by its license to use, etc.: thats great. Use it if you like it, leave it if you don't. But if you figure to have issues you need to accept that nobody is in debt for helping you out at all. Which does mean that you might hit grumpy developers / moderators...

We have moderators in those forums to keep them in a usable state, not to promote Rockbox.

Message to Rockbox officials:  get a little less elite, or the word will get out that you are wrapped too tight and don't want to deal with new people.

Message to users: Rockbox is a project. It's done by volunteers for one reason: fun. If it's not fun we'll stop doing it. If we don't have a single user: we don't care. We're doing this for fun, not for users, glory or such. We don't need users. It's nice to have users thoug, but we don't need them. If we loose you as user: not a single developer will care. Accept it, that's life.

[Llorean]

I wouldn't go so far as to say "not a single developer will care." Most of them will say something like "it's sad that he couldn't accept the situation and had to storm off like that." But it's still going to be your own choice, and your own fault.

We put a nice warning in front of our forums telling you the guidelines are enforced.

The guidelines include a requirement that you search, and a lot of helpful information. If you read them before posting, you're not going to see this "snotty" attitude because you're going to act in a way that shows you're trying. If you choose to decide that you can just ignore something you clicked that you agreed to, I'm not entirely sure why I'm supposed to feel bad about the idea of holding you to it anyway.

The key is that people who get responses they tend to think are rude either haven't searched, or haven't even read the front page. You may say the search engine sucks, but most times I tell someone to search first I'll tell them "just search for (keyword)" where it's an obvious one in their post, and one I've found brings up the desired information in the first few results. I don't just assume searching will work blindly, nor do I depend on obscure search terms the user clearly won't know - I draw from their own post and choose something simple so that when I'm telling them they should've searched it's because I know that a basic search would work.

Everyone here is a volunteer, on their own spare time. The "users" need to follow the guidelines because we want to keep the forums relatively clean. We've seen what forums can devolve into without stricter guidelines - you get a lot of "community" support that isn't very good at all. There's also good support, but you see dozens of suggestions that won't solve a problem, or will make it worse, and it's hard for developers to track bugs that haven't been reported yet because key information rarely gets asked for, and you rarely know if they've been given a useful solution and still have the issue.

So our forums require certain behaviour from people. Don't ask common questions because it clutters up searches. Don't chat about non-Rockbox stuff because it clutters up searches. Don't answer questions with potentially harmful suggestions like "just reformat it" when you haven't identified the problem yet. Post in the right area so people can make more refined searches. When rules like this aren't followed, we end up having to clean up the forums.

Basically, we provide you with the software for free. We provide you with a degree of support, again for free. If you'd like a less moderated community where information tends to be of a significantly lower quality, I can recommend one for most of our various hardwares. But members of those forums tend to migrate here, not the other way around, because our policies do tend to work.

People who actually stop and think about it for a bit realize there's a benefit to ensuring there's not a lot of spam about "Will my player work?" or "Why won't you port to my player?" because it means people can actually find things. That new posts actually get read more, and by more people, because there's not a lot of pointless ones and if they're posted according to guidelines it's easy to see if they're in an area you know about.

If you think we could be more polite - yeah, sure, that's definitely possible. I don't like our people being impolite. But there's a gray area, where most of them are. Thinks like "you should've read the front page, everything is listed there," or "Search our forums first," depend heavily on implied tone, which of course the reader can make up as he or she sees fit. I don't see any direct insulting of users, nobody has been called an idiot here by a moderator for a very, very long time. And "friendly" tone can just as easily be seen as condescending anyway, so I think a neutral tone, even if it can be interpreted as negative, is at least as acceptable.

If you don't like it, as has been said previously, you're welcome to leave. But unless you can come up with policies to address all of the problems we've created ours to address, I'm really not too interested in hearing "your policies are bad" without constructive replacement ones that will not generate new problems.

Of course I might be a little more sympathetic as well if you hadn't shown a willingness in the past to actually mock someone for pointing out the guidelines to you, quite the strange behaviour for someone who thinks the key is to "play nice."

[pwhodges]

I spend a bit of time looking at forums for Linux, digital cameras and a few other tech topics.  I'm also the author of more than a dozen "how-to" tutorials that have been proaised in the US and UK.

I spend a lot of time on a number of open-source project forums, and they are generally run on similar lines to this one - because it works for them.  It is best not to project your own experience and expectations onto the whole of the rest of the Internet without checking first, because you'll find it often doesn't fit!

I do computer support professionally; I also spend a lot of time telling people to look up the answer, because it's appropriate that they should (often I would have to, so they are in effect just trying to get me to do the search for them).  Of course, if they don't understand the answer, I will explain it and help them as necessary - even if that explanation leads to what to look up next.  As a result, my users are not dependent on me, but use my expertise effectively.

[Llorean]

That's basically the idea here, yes - help the people who actually need help and tell the people who haven't showed that they tried to help themselves that they need to do a bit of basic footwork first.

It takes less time to type "check the manual" when you know the answer's in the manual but don't know the exact details because you don't use the feature than it does to read the manual and rewrite that section for the person. If they'd already checked the manual, they should say "the manual says to do X but I don't understand what it means" at which case someone who does know how to use the feature can attempt to clarify.

[Hillshum]

One other issue I have seen is that sometimes the responses to minor rule violations have seemed a bit on the harsh side.

[Llorean]

I would think that warning them rather than expecting them to actually live up to their side of the agreement they agreed to would be considered lenient rather than harsh.

I mean, we could just actually enforce things without giving warnings, right?

A warning that makes it absolutely clear we really do expect the rules to be enforced is preferable to having to make several less clear warnings because the person doesn't actually realize we're serious about these guidelines.

[ej0rge]

Here's the thing: It's often easy to be charitable to one person. And sometimes, even that can give you regrets.

But we're operating in a scenario where it's not just one person - it's lots of people. Not everyone who turns up with a need will get a charitable response because there just isn't enough to go around. Most of them would be better off helping themselves. Many are turned away. Many who are served are underserved. It quickly becomes an ugly situation. It's the same in any situation where the need far outstretches the available help.

All solutions to the social problem at hand are unpleasant in some fashion, but a few of them allow the project to progress despite the unpleasantness.

I could try to help everyone who has trouble installing on a Gigabeat S. I've repaired about 8 of the things and been through the wringer with them over and over - I know how to solve their problems.

But the truth is that rockbox on the beast is not really ready for general consumption. If someone really needs hand-holding to get it going, they're probably better off waiting in the long run. And it's often true in these scenarios that one good turn demands another and another.

And like any other developer-driven free software - it's not for everyone. It's unfortunate but unavoidable that the number of people who could enjoy it's use is larger than the number of people who can reliably and successfully use it.

I'm in the uncomfortable position of being largely technically adept but not a coder. For some reason I'm not able to visualize solutions to problems the way that is required to write program source code. I failed several programming classes before i came to terms with that. There is much i understand about the development process, but i stink at it, and i don't even enjoy trying.

Instead, I'm a software quality analyst. Ironically, the two bugs I've submitted for rockbox are total crap.

My problem with these forums is that i don't know if I'm contributing anything positive or just pissing people off. Sometimes I'm certain, in retrospect, that I've only annoyed people. As a tester with about 8 years of professional experience, I am accutely aware that bug reports are only genuinely useful within particular windows of time that are both short and very specific to the issues at hand, and at all other times are mostly just noise.

This is a social system that wasn't designed to accomodate newbies. It's unfortunate but unavoidable that it fails to accomodate them.