On 29/07/11 09:33, Dianne Reuby wrote:
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.
Our IRC channel can and should be like that too (and I actually think it is)
Do we have an Ubuntu newcomers IRC channel that would be more
appropriate?
there is an ubuntu beginners channel it is in fact #ubuntu-beginners, in
the topic of that channel is a link to this rather nice guide on asking
smart questions: http://is.gd/nmyFqV
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.
IRC works well if you ask questions at a reasonable time of day, and
hang about for a while. Many people have an IRC client connected 24/7
but sometimes we do see in the logs people connect at 3:30am ask a
question, complain 2 minutes later that nobody is responding, then
disconnect! The #ubuntu channel does scroll past very fast but there are
a lot of people there to answer questions. Personally it makes my head
spin. The #ubuntu-uk channel is much slower, and we have time to be
friendly - in #ubuntu anything that is off-topic gets silenced because
it gets in the way of other people asking support questions.
I searched the logs for the last three months of #ubuntu-uk for the word
"hub" and I couldn't find anything that seems related to this incident
so I am really keen to find out more about what happened.
askubuntu.com can also be a good place to get an answer to a question,
but sometimes what you want can't be expressed in the form of a
question. There are loads of communication mediums and some are more
comfortable than others for different people, this is fine, but they
should all be friendly and respectful.
Dianne
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