[Asterisk-Users] Netiquette, newbies, politeness and such (was G.729 . . . I SMELL SMOKE!)

[Wilson Pickett]

>> <snip referring to long nights of reading>
> Many newbies share this poster's misery, though few may be able to
> articulate it as well. Should they be flamed for that? I say no.

Let me add (as a newbie with many projects and a life and a production
asterisk pbx) that seeing the constant response of "look it up on the
mailing list" on the IRC channel and "this has been discussed many
time here so don't be lazy" in the list itself is one thing. But when
you do a lot of searching, you'll see that a large amount of messages
brought up in a search will be empty of any useful content, not
because the person posting couldn't answer the question, but because
they refused to do so and then complained about the noise. IMO, if you
want to bitch, answer the question, *then* bitch! If you don't have an
answer or don't want to give one, use your right to remain silent
instead of adding more useless search results. Complaining about the
noise in a question thread (of which this current one is not) is just
ADDING MORE noise.

The community has a clear choice, either attract people who are just
getting started (which I'd like to see, we *need* people other that
programmers, this is the *users* list) or repel them and keep asterisk
in the sorcery domain that unix stayed in for centuries (well, the
equivalent of in technical temporal frame.) I don't doubt that there
are people who like that idea, but it won't advance the cause of
asterisk at all, merely keep it in the ghetto.