[Asterisk-Users] IRC Etiquette

[Deon Rodden]

Read this "thread" since Mark wrote the email. Decided to add my 2 cents. I
join the mailing lists for whatever project my company puts me in, and I've
seen this problem before. I almost come to expect it. And I can see it from
both points of views. I've spent many hours in the Wiki, just reading and
learning. Sometimes I wish certain things would be elaborated a little more,
not just a quick "this is what it does" and the description is more
complicated than the actual item. I would expect//hope that if I asked the
users list or IRC for further elaboration, I'd hope they'd help me, or at
least point me to more in depth documentation on it. I don't mind it when
somebody replies to me with a specific link to what I'm looking for, it
helps me out greatly, and I have no problem reading up on it or learning it.
I think that becomes the major issue here, people that ask help right away
without looking it up.

I dislike very much the posts that say "I just installed Asterisk, I need it
to do this, how do I do it?" and they expect somebody to give them the
configs and support from A-Z. Many of us have spent countless hours in our
configs, tweaking, fixing, enhancing, and for somebody to expect us to whip
up configs on the fly for them is a little presumptious. I usually do not
reply to those questions, as I know that even if I tried, I probably
couldn't hide the sarcasm. If the post seems nice enough or genuine enough,
I may reply with a link.

The guru's get sarcastic because they've spent countless hours reading
documentation, previous messages, sifting through code, and they finally got
it worked out for the most part. And for some person to jump on with doing
little to no research at all and to expect them to teach them everything, of
course that would be annoying.  I do like Chris's perspective, that
disrespect is earned, not respect. It makes sense, if I don't know somebody,
I will initially treat them with respect, you have to in our field.  So if a
new person posts "help me do everything I want so I don't have to research
it" politely respond, point them to documentation and maybe even give them a
quick starter on where to look or how they should proceed to accomplish it.
If they continue to ask for help, every single time they run into even a
small problem, then I can see the level of sarcasm rising; But just try to
calmly let them know that they can't keep asking for help every single time
something simple comes up.

I think for the most part, people in this list have been helpful, far more
helpful than I would have been at some points in time. Keep up the good
work. Anyways, see you all at Astricon.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Leif Madsen" <leif.madsen at gmail.com>
To: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] IRC Etiquette


> Just for the heck of it, I am going to throw my 2 cents in here.
> Choose your particular currency for its value.
>
> I've been in and around the Asterisk community for some time now
> (approximately a year) and have seen the number of users increase
> almost exponentially.  I know many of the most active contributors,
> and I think I'm at least known of, by most.  I've seen people talking
> down to other people, and I mostly ignore it.  You have to realize
> that even though we are a "community", any online community has its
> fair share of guru's.  These guru's have spent the time to learn a
> particular system without nearly as many resource materials as there
> are available now.  These people have spent possibly hundreds of hours
> learning the system through trial and error, and yes, I'm sure a fair
> amount of time spent on IRC asking questions, and having them
> answered.
>
> What I think the problem is, is that people expect not only to have
> their hands held by these people, but often they expect to be carried.
>  There are many new users that install Asterisk (or attempt) and fail
> because they haven't read *any* of the introductory documentation.  I
> realize that the documentation is not always 100% clear, but I find
> most of it to be quite good for what *is* there.  The wiki is probably
> the most often referred to resource, along with a couple of key
> websites, which need to be referred to often.  What I think irks the
> people who have "put their time in" is questions that can be *EASILY*
> answered with about 5 seconds worth of searching and googling.  I can
> understand the frustration many new users find, as I've both seen it
> and experienced it, but these are things that *ANY* large community
> has.  Have you ever spent time on a large newsgroup?  You'll find much
> much worse than you find here.  The trolling is quite low for a
> mailing list as large as Asterisk's.
>
> I think if time is spent doing a little bit of research and attempting
> to *understand*, and not just *get working*, this system we call
> Asterisk, and when asking a question, knowing it is an informed,
> educated question, you'll go much further to gain respect from the
> "guru's".
>
> I am no guru.  I'm just a telecom newbie (currently completing my
> third year of telecommuncations technology) who just loves the
> possibilties Asterisk brings to my table.
> I can feel the new users pain with attempting to understand Asterisk.
> I still don't know many, many parts of it, but before I go asking a
> question in the IRC channel, or the mailing list, I *atleast* spend
> 5-10 minutes searching the mailing lists and the wiki.  I think you'll
> find with a little bit of searching, that most of the most common
> elements of Asterisk are documented enough to a degree to get you most
> of the way there.  If something doesn't make sense, really try and
> think of why it might not work, and ask an informed and educated
> question.
>
> You'll always have the people who say "go search Google" or "search
> the wiki".  Of course that is what you should do, but I think if you
> spend the time trying to learn it on your own just a little bit before
> going and asking for your hand to be held, you'll find the community
> much friendlier and willing to help you when you need the help.
>
> If you've actually spent the time to read my post, wow :)
> Leif Madsen
> http://www.asteriskdocs.org
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