Explaining FreeBSD features

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2005-06-23 12:51, cali <calculus at softhome.net> wrote:
>
> If they were like ultra-newbie, they might not even know how to access
> the manual, but this is improbable.
>
> The idea is, the newbie gets repeatedly told "RTFM", so that
> eventually they get the idea that they must work it out for themselves
> because they develop this inner fear of asking for help and being
> ridiculed, ie they don't want to portray themselves as a
> "lamer". Usually it works.
>
> Sometimes there are people who will spout "RTFM" willy-nilly. I have
> witnessed on several occassions (not on this list) of people spouting
> "RTFM" when the manual in question did not contain the answer to the
> question asked at all, thereby backfiring on the "RTFM" spouter and
> resulting in self-ridicule. In such cases I believe that the spouter
> has some self-esteem problem and likes to newbie-bash, or just hazards
> a guess that the answer must be in the manual and automatically spouts
> "RTFM".
>
> So the question bearer should state whether they have read the manual
> first. Then if it turns out that the answer is in the manual, they
> shall be ridiculed, resulting in them hopefully being much more
> careful next time when they read the manual.
>
> Sometimes people ask simple questions, the answer is in the manual,
> but reading the manual to find the answer is akin to reading a book to
> discover how many pages it has. In such cases one feels that the
> information asked should be somewhere else, not buried in a big
> manual. It may be more useful in such cases to just answer the
> question so it ends up in the mailing archive and comes up when
> someone searches for it.

I'm not watching the entire thread, so what I write below may seem a bit
out of context.  On the other hand, this particular post shows some of
the few points I don't like about a stream of "RTFM" responses.

You seem to overvalue "ridicule", IMHO.

My intuition and experience with asking questions so far seems to be
that it's usually a much better idea to give two-fold answers:

	- Actually point the user to a working solution (assuming there
	  is one, of course).
	- Include relevant pointers to further documentation.