The worst thing about rockbox

[evanthepanther]

honestly the worst thing I've found about rockbox is the lack of help (although I'm sure its the same repetitive "dumb" questions over and over that gets mods/senior forum members aggravated) that people are willing to give. I have asked some of these questions, being completely new to rockbox, and instead of being told an answer, i get pointed to where to find an answer (often involving the person looking up the answer themselves, and then giving me a link to it, basically saying "READ"). I've felt belittled by some people, and treated like I havent done enough reading to warrant a question being put in the forums, when in fact, I've read, and I've searched for the question, and had turned up nothing.

I have 4 themes I would like to submit, but I'm not sure if I want to because I got some weird error when I tried to submit them, and I don't dare ask about it on the forums.

I'm currently running a call of duty competitive ladder with the clan I'm in (consisting of 80+ members), and believe me I get some questions that seem like common sense, but whats the point of flexing muscle, and acting like your the big man on campus!?

By saying this, I dont want to get banned for making some mod angry, i want to bring to their attention how they are making the new people feel. When I found rockbox, and first loaded it up on my mp3 player, i was shocked at the ability, and style of it, I love rockbox. I would love to work on the coding side of it, but being nervous about asking any kind of question isnt helping in the least.

[TexasRockbox]

I don't think it's the lack of willingness to help or intention to belittle.  The developers of Rockbox:

1. May have lives outside of Rockbox
2. May have families
3. May have "real" jobs
4. Code Rockbox
5. Moderate rockbox.org (and answer questions)
5. Provide Rockbox and documentation for free
7. Are human
8. All of the above (and more)

There are two schools of thought (may be others):

1. Just give an answer and feed a person for a day.
2. Teach a person how to find the answer and feed them for a lifetime.

I strongly suspect that #2 applies here.

The best route to asking a question on Rockbox is (minimum) check the manual first and if the answer isn't found or isn't clear, then ask the question.  In that way the person asking the question helps the developers (and others) out by indirectly pointing out something that needs to be addressed, added or corrected in the documentation or wiki.  That's something a developer or technical writer can relate to and work on a fix.  Time is precious and in short supply.

I can understand how the attitude seems harsh but people who ask questions, expect immediate answers, get them and never come back have drained (little by little) a finite resource whether it be people, forum space and/or forum hardware.

Having been both a coder and customer service rep (sometimes simultaneously) it can be a very tough juggling act to present an atmosphere that the customer is the only one.  That atmosphere isn't easy and it isn't cheap.  In a way the Rockbox project is something one might never encounter in the "real world" -- interacting directly with the developers.  In the company I work for access to developers is not in the support contract and when demanded by the customer it is *very* expensive (think thousands of dollars an hour).

It would be great to have a customer service dept. for Rockbox and let the coders do their thing but who to staff it and when?  At that point, for many, it stops being fun and becomes a job.  Who wants to work multiple jobs?

The forum (and IRC) is the customer service, but so is the manual and wiki.

How may I help you?

[yapper]

instead of being told an answer, i get pointed to where to find an answer (often involving the person looking up the answer themselves, and then giving me a link to it, basically saying "READ").

I think this is one of the best ways of answering questions. I frequently simply post a reply to a question simply pointing to the appropriate part of the manual. I appreciate that many newcomers simply don't know where to find information, but once they know where to look, it reduces the load on the rest of us.

If the information in the manual ISN'T adequate, then we need to know so the manual can be improved. If the answer in the manual IS adequate, then everyone gets the same answer (from the manual), rather than a new version of the answer being typed on the forums each time the question is asked.

[bluebrother]

If the answer in the manual IS adequate, then everyone gets the same answer (from the manual), rather than a new version of the answer being typed on the forums each time the question is asked.

You should also not forget that things change over time. For example, some features might get added or features might get changed. Posting the "correct" answer might be an answer that is wrong in a couple of weeks simply because the feature it relies to changed. Pointing to the place where it is documented (which usually should be the manual) is a much better way, simply because the answer will be correct even if the feature changed -- the manual should be updated (of course it might be out of date), so if anyone searches for the question he gets not an outdated but a correct answer. Which is way better.

Besides, who wants to answer (and type that answer) over and over again? There is a reason we have documentation: to make life easier for both developers and users.

You should also not forget that it's important to ask questions the correct way: see http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html It's quite simple: people put in a lot of work to make Rockbox work as good as it is and to make it available to you. It's only fair of them to expect you doing your part of the homework, which means checking the documentation and available resources first before you require them to put in time to help you. Remember, Rockbox is not a product, you haven't paid for it and all work done is not paid at all but on a free time basis. Which means that you shouldn't expect anything at all. However, there are quite a lot of people trying to help in the support channels. If you did your homework then there shouldn't be any reason to be afraid of asking anything Rockbox related in the support channels.

[evanthepanther]

Thats another problem I didnt address in the OP, the majority of people that reply to things, do not listen.

@ Texas
the list you made is negated by the fact that these people are on this site, attempting to help people in their own free time, and doing it the wrong way. If everyone was so busy with their normal lives, then they dont need to waste the time with hounding a person for asking a question.

also, having looked in the manual over and over for things that I have posted in the forums, and then being told its in some place that would not make any sense at all, when in fact its a glitch (which is later labeled as a "fix for another glitch"), THEN on top of that, being pointed to a forum for the "fix" when it does not apply! Saying that by asking a question people expect immediate answers is completely false, I practice the virtue of patience, if I am showed how to find an answer on my own, i'm extremely happy for it, but if I am treated like an idiot, then what do you expect?

@yapper

Having said that I looked in the manual and turned up nothing before asking the question/s, it would be obvious that there is a problem in the manual. With looking through the manual out of curiosity I've run into ton's of holes (and when searching for what the manual didnt provide, i often see the response of "rockbox is an mp3 player, not a ______"), one of the holes would be the "dict" plugin/application, the manual entry for it is non-existent

[Llorean]

Given that a lot of your posts look like http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=23827 the reason you get short responses isn't so much related to the "atmosphere" as it is your posting style.

In the first one, you were given a completely adequate answer in the very first response, but due to your inability to read the thread he linked well you continued to ask further questions that were already answered. In that case it really was a "they linked you to the right place, where the information certainly was, but you either did not read it or misread it and asked further questions."

You really can't blame people for not telling you enough when, if they do, you're unwilling to read it all in the first place.

If you showed some signs of reading comprehension people would likely be less short with you, but when people give you answers that are wholly adequate and you go and come back with new questions that were answered in the very same information you were just linked to, it inspires people to not want to help you because you very clearly aren't interested in reading things on your own.

To claim that you have gone and read the manual, etc, is all very well and good, but when interactions with you explicitly show that you aren't trying very hard it becomes very hard to believe such things.

The best way to get positive responses is to say "I looked in the manual for information about X but all it says is Y, and I was wondering if Z." This makes it clear you've seen some of what's there already.


You feel like you're treated like an idiot because people are giving you answers that they personally would feel are adequate answers if given to themselves. If what is adequate for Bob makes you feel like an idiot, is that Bob's problem for it being adequate, or yours for interpreting it otherwise?

[saratoga]

honestly the worst thing I've found about rockbox is the lack of help (although I'm sure its the same repetitive "dumb" questions over and over that gets mods/senior forum members aggravated) that people are willing to give. I have asked some of these questions, being completely new to rockbox, and instead of being told an answer, i get pointed to where to find an answer (often involving the person looking up the answer themselves, and then giving me a link to it, basically saying "READ"). I've felt belittled by some people, and treated like I havent done enough reading to warrant a question being put in the forums, when in fact, I've read, and I've searched for the question, and had turned up nothing.

Is this about your vocoder thread because you never answered me about that.

[torne]

No, it's about the shutdown issue that Llorean just linked to

[bluebrother]

the list you made is negated by the fact that these people are on this site, attempting to help people in their own free time, and doing it the wrong way. If everyone was so busy with their normal lives, then they dont need to waste the time with hounding a person for asking a question.

That's a perfect reason to stop replying to your posts immediately. At least I'll do so starting now.

(Besides, by which reason can you tell that people trying to help are doing it "the wrong way"? That's really arrogant and ignorant with regard to the people who actually spend their time and tried to help.)

Edit: ok, scraped my last sentence. The rest still stands.

[Llorean]

To be fair, he did try to help in a few places. It doesn't help that his helpful posts look like this though:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=23976.msg162727#msg162727

His post doesn't really provide much in the way of useful information. It also suffers from the somewhat common vague use of pronouns ("work it backward" without any obvious clue what "it" is, for example) people get into the habit of when speaking (because you can nod or gesture in the direction of something, which is something that doesn't carry over into text).

But it is an attempt at trying to be useful. You can't really say he didn't try just that his attempts weren't very thorough/clear.

[JdGordon]

I want to add that none of the things in the OP are specific to rockbox and are ingrained in the general FOSS community mentality.


start a thread with the theme errors, those sort of things wont get you yelled at (if its in the right section)

[AlexP]

start a thread with the theme errors, those sort of things wont get you yelled at (if its in the right section)

Being in the wrong section won't get you yelled at either, it'll just get your post moved

[TexasRockbox]

I think this is the problem from the OP that is the actual problem (buried in the venting) of this thread:

I have 4 themes I would like to submit, but I'm not sure if I want to because I got some weird error when I tried to submit them, and I don't dare ask about it on the forums.

From the description there is a weird error when uploading themes.  Perhaps the question belongs in the Theming sub-forum.

@even
Good customer service involves both speaking and listening (lots of good listening) -- between the two parties.  From subject of the post there is no way to tell what exactly is the problem.  Whatever it is, it's the "worst".  Going by the first paragraph we see concern and venting -- is that the problem?  Perhaps.  Keep reading.  Now we have a problem description: uploading themes with a "weird error"  (was the error searched? what is the error?).  Nothing for anyone else to research or figure out yet.  Then the final two paragraphs are more venting.

I feel your pain and understand your frustration.  Sometimes a customer just needs to vent.  At my work, we let the customer vent (until it becomes verbally abusive).  Again using my work as an example, personality reasons and pressing (hard) deadlines for code or fixes are why some coders aren't really allowed to speak to customers.  If it is truly necessary for the customer to contact these coders the communication is handled in conjunction with a support rep skilled in customer service and adapting to the customer's personality needs.  Good, personal customer service is truly hard to find.

Due to the high turnover rate of visitors (customers) to the Rockbox site (because they got their quick answer and ran) the number of active Rockbox experts are comparatively few.

Here's a hint on problem submission and communication: CEPAN  (pronounced: cee-pan).  What is it?

C: (Customer name)
E: (Environment -- give all details: Rockbox version, computer make, OS, processor, memory, HD, etc.)
P: (Problem description.  Describe accurately and completely.  Include all information as to how to recreate the problem.)
A: (Action -- what has been done thus far to resolve the problem: read manuals? tried another method? apply a fix?)
N: (Next -- what is the next step expected -- plan? and how urgent is the next step)

Don't assume that something is irrelevant.

One of the biggest support frustrations (not said to the customer, of course) is a problem submission with no details.

That is: "I have a problem that needs fixing".  That's it.  Now, there is absolutely nothing for the support person to do but attempt to contact the customer and inquire: what is your problem, what is your environment, etc.  That means the customer waits longer and the support rep will not have any opportunity to research the problem before contacting the customer.  If the customer supplied the information at first, the first contact may have had a solution, instead the support rep has to try to do something on the fly (awkward and risky) or break off with the customer and then do the research and then contact the customer again.  More time wasted and customer gets a resolution much later than it would have been if CEPAN had already been done.

Help us help you.

[funman]

honestly the worst thing I've found about rockbox is the lack of help

To me it sounds like you had a bad first impression (I have read your other thread about the ipod), and I hope you'll change your mind if you stay here a little !

Personally I think rockbox has a lot of informations for beginners (detailed manual, although not always up to date with some content) and active forums / wiki, and this is not true for other open source projects.

For example VLC has ridiculous user support with perhaps 4 persons contributing daily to the forums with lots of people asking questions every day.

When there are less contributors (read, experts) than users (asking questions), then it's understandable that they link to the part of the doc where the question is answered rather than explaining it in details (and is more friendly IMO than just copy pasting the part of the manual).


About not listening to the post they are answering to, I think it's excusable.
A lot of topics are popular and tend to be asked forever, so when you contribute and see "this post again" then perhaps you'll just skip the details and post the same answer (or link) than before.

Didn't this happen to you in your call of duty community already?

Like someone ask you something and you give a prepared answer, then he tells you "but you didn't read carefully, my problem is a bit different".

[matt0001]

How perfect. I first tried rockbox about 18 months ago. While I was moderately impressed with the software, I was thoroughly turned off by the attitude on this forum. After a few months, I uninstalled rockbox and never looked back. Until today. I wanted to see how the software has improved over this time, and see if it might be worth a second try. And I see this thread. Obviously, nothing has changed. The participants in this forum are still entirely rude and unhelpful, still clinging to their holy manual.

As I said in my one other post in this forum, I am a reference librarian. Basically, answering stupid questions is my job. I understand the frustration some of you may feel. But your reliance on your holy manual is totally not the way to go. Everyone learns and solves problems differently. Some (very few) can actually get through your holy manual and have all their questions answered. Some learn better from tutorial videos, some need some extra attention and patience to have their questions answered in a way that is helpful to them. You guys really need to learn and understand this.

If there is any reason why rockbox has not been adopted by more people, it is the lack of support and rude attitudes on this forum. By being this way you keep your user-size very small. I suppose that is your choice.

I'll check back in again in another 18 months.