[asterisk-users] Why does everyone seem to dislike *now?

[randulo]

On 9/21/07, Tim Panton <thp at westhawk.co.uk> wrote:

> I don't think IRC is the natural habitat of people who like NOW,
> NOW is for people who like web based GUIs. You are much more likely
> to find them over in the web based digium forums.

Since we're talking about this, I have been on the #asterisk channel
of Freenode for a few years. I came on as a complete newbie have very
rarely used IRC if ever. Before posting on any IRC channel, it's
absolutely imperative to lurk there as along as possible to see what
kind of people are there, what the sense of humor is like (I'm
thinking of say TKDefender or Steve Underwood as examples) and maybe
you'll be ready to interface with the group after you've seen a few
"attacks" on people who don't lurk before jumping in.

Every extreme exists on tech IRC channels, and the key term here is
EXTREME. SOme epople act like robots, immediately calling "FLOOD!" if
someone pastes exactly three lines of a dialplan. Other are saying in
explicit terms that "if you'd bothered to google for this, blah" which
is very true 80% of the time and useless for things where an
entry-level user whould know what to google for. (DISA? How would you
know that term?) I myself am usually patient but I have gotten
irritated and even had to resort to the ignore list a few times when
after giving a few specific links it becomes obvious that the person
just will not go study the stuff but wants to be hand held live.

Yes, AsteriskNOW! and Trixbox are NOT the subjects of #asterisk. There
is IMO though a need for a less mechanical way to make people
understand that without immediate rudeness.

For the faint at heart, monitored web forums are probably better. If
you think IRC will help, the best way to use it would be literally to
luck for days until a question comes up that you have some insight
into. At that point, you can actually bring something in, and you'll
defacto have become part of the group. By watching the dicsussion for
a few days, you'll know all about pastebin, about not asking if you
can asj a question, about having a ducks back for the few constantly
and systematically rude people (I have no one person in mind here :)
ansd you will find yourself laughing at lous to Steve Underwood's
"poker-face" jokes that come out of nowhere.

Personally, I will not talk to anyone who does not know what a
dialplan is and refuses to go read a link to the explanation.