Re: Thanks

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Mark M. Wilson wrote:

> to work this out.  I read more and more lately about how more people
> are going Linux, and that greater efforts are being made all the time
> to facilitate this. You'd think some of the code wizards would ask
> themselves why they're bothering if they're only going to alienate the
> people they're attracting.

There are a number of subproblems here:

1. A lot of people don't know how to ask questions and find answers.

   A lot of time people come onto IRC or the mailing list in "give me the
   answer" mode, which really isn't the right way to go about it.
   Instead of saying "get me from here to there", it works better if
   people say "I am here, I want to get there, here are the steps I am
   going to take, please tell me what I need to do to complete step X."

   And sometimes the newbie asks the right question, but in the wrong way.
   There are different degrees of "lameness". ;-)

2. The available resources are not sufficiently utilized, either because
   the questioner does not bother to look at them or the questionee has
   not made them obvious enough.

3. Answering the same questions over and over is boring compared to
   coding. :)

Now, are there any other elements of the problem, and what steps do we
need to take to solve it in the context of GNOME? Tell us your ideas for
fixing the situation, and we will all work together on making something
happen.

-- Elliot					http://developer.gnome.org/
The first thing a programmer needs to admit is that any program is by far
more complex than his own mind. Thats why he partitions it into neat
pieces and avoids complexity.