On Fri, 2011-07-29 at 09:12 +0100, alan c wrote: > My immediate reaction is to think of prompting phone contact, or > having it as an option somehow. In this case the user reverted to > direct personal contact with a person already known to them, to > confide in. It can be taken that the user did not 'know' the IRC > helper, and could not confide. Or at least, they felt that way.
My only experience of internet chat before Ubuntu was that AIM stuff that my children loved but I hated - mainly because it flooded with weird strangers. I was very nervous when I started using IRC because of this, and I was also worried that I could do something wrong (don't ask me what!) and get told off (don't ask me why, or by whom!) I mainly used the forums, and always the "absolute beginners" - there I felt that I could ask any question, no matter how basic, and not be worried about showing my ignorance. Do we have an Ubuntu newcomers IRC channel that would be more appropriate? But I always felt IRC wasn't really the place to ask about problems - the person with the answer may not be online, and a question would pretty quickly scroll off the screen. In a forum it's there to be answered whenever the experts called in. Dianne -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
