[hobbit] Sorry... I had to vent

[Smith, Jim]

Jerald,

I don't make many comments on this board anymore, but I want to chime-in
on this.

I agree with what you say about people needing to read the
documentation.  However, I don't agree with your tone.  Even the acronym
"RTFM" is an insult, in my opinion.

We were all "newbies" at some point and probably asked some dumb
questions ourselves.

Jim Smith
SVHS
Little Rock


-----Original Message-----
From: Jerald Sheets [mailto:questy at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 8:17 PM
To: hobbit at hswn.dk
Subject: [hobbit] Sorry... I had to vent

Does anyone at all RTFM any more?

We have wikis, docs, a several-year mailing list archive, three
wonderful software and addon repositories.

Still, we have questions that are in the man pages on the freaking Xymon
menu and even in their own separate page on the Xymon help menu in the
installation itself.

This group exists to help when you've reached a level of proficiency,
and thing that aren't clearly spelled out in the docs are not working as
expected, or there are little "gotchas" that you might need help with
that we've all been through.

True, I'm the first person to grump at someone when they don't receive a
newcomer in a friendly manner, but coming on here and asking questions
that are clearly laid out in the docs is just plain lazy.

I wouldn't even let my teenagers get away with that.


Guys, if you have questions there is no one more ready than I to help
you trudge through a problem.  But when you don't so much as get into
the docs and ferret out the basic functionality of the software, you
really make it hard to even want to help you.

On your Xymon install:  just mouse over the "Help" menu, and all your
basic answers will be there.  If you get into a hairy spot, bring it
here and we can ll puzzle over it together.


(sorry... I had three separate people ask precisely the kind of question
that showed they didn't want to do the basic footwork necessary to make
their app work, and expected suppor to just do it all for them.  They
wouldn't even read the manual it took me weeks to put together and post
on the company intranet.)

I actually heard the words today "I don't want to read that book" (22
pages, mind you) "I just want you to make it work."

It's a statistical package...  you actually have to know basic
statistics.  They don't.

UGH!

Sorry again.  A real RTFM moment for me.


--j
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