Hello All! This is Manas Alekar. I have been on the PLUG list for some time now. I have been following lots of mail about mailing etiquette and behaviour of people on the mailing list in general.
There are some misunderstandings on this list which are leading to waste of a lot of bandwidth at all our places. The battle seems to be between two factions, the 'power users' and the 'newbies'. I am firmly entrenched in between both camps :). The newbies seem to complain all the time that; 1. There is too much RTFM. 2. The big boys are rude. 3. The answers are not much help except people proving they are smart. Thinking from the point of a newbie, I agree, that undertones such an attitude might seem present in the mails of some of the people. The experts always complain that; 1. The newbies don't do their homework. 2. The newbies don't know how to ask (which is just [1] in the first place). 3. We got RTFM at some point in past, and we did not mind it! The saddest part of the story is that they seem to be correct in their own rights too. I have a slightly different take on this though. This looks more to me like a problem of newbies are from Mars, experts are from Venus. We seem to speak different languages. It is important for the newbies to understand that every community has a way of functioning. The rules that govern the behaviour mandated from it's members are not born out of whimsical personal fancies, but out of evolution. They help the community flourish and be efficient. A lot has been learnt from experience and some axioms are best followed rather than questioned. Bottom posting in mailing lists and being polite are two such examples. The abstraction from human interface that the Internet provides should not be abused. Talk to people on the list the way you would talk to them in person. Realise that most people could be your father's age or way more adept at things being discussed than you are. It is not *cool* to be abusive. Full stop. Secondly, it is really unfair to ask a question just because you were too tired to look for an answer yourself. Although I agree that collective experience should be made useful to the members of the community, in communities like ours, it is not exactly appreciated if you ask for help without trying yourself first. In other communities, such behavioral patterns might get characterised as *looser*. That said, there is one more very important thing that people need to understand. RTFM _is not_ Read The Fucking Manual. It stands for Read The Fine Manual. Please remember that this is not intended to be derogatory way of looking down upon newbies. It is just a way quick, efficient way for a person who found the relevant information in the manual to tell you that it exists there. It means - "Well, I know that this information is given in the manual. Can you just look it up, so that we can save my time and our bandwidth ?". Don't feel offended at RTFM. Similar is the situation with GG. Lastly, the mailing list admin is our friend. He is here to help us run a more productive list. If you want to take up an issue with him or want to know why your mails are not going through, you can always mail him. It might be a trivial settings mistake which he made by mistake. He is human. As for the experts, can you guys be more humane towards the mortals ? I know newbies waste a lot of your time and ask stupid looking questions, but in forgiving lies greatness. That said, if anyone thinks that they disagree with what I have said, *sod off*. :)) Regards, Manas -- ______________________________________________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List: ([email protected]) List Information: http://plug.org.in/mailing-list/listinfo/plug-mail Send 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for mailing instructions.
