[CentOS-docs] Potential loss of a wiki contributor.

Fri May 8 18:55:56 UTC 2009
Dag Wieers <dag at centos.org>

On Fri, 8 May 2009, David Dreggors wrote:

>>> Regarding his issues with #centos - no idea ...
>
> As to the #centos, just all to often seems to be a "pot luck" of weather
> you even get a response there. Sometimes (quite often) when you do it is
> in the form of a nasty remark followed by a not so helpful "rtfm" and no
> real answer ever given. Obviously you can't control the users in the
> channel but I'm just saying that it is not nice for new Linux users
> looking for help to get told stop asking dumb questions and rtfm. My
> point in those comments was merely to have someone re-think the advice
> to go to #centos for support when this very place often alienates new users.

I know you are not the only one with this remark and while we cannot 
control individual users, we could look at how to change the attitude and 
atmosphere on the channel.

I think we need to see with our #centos IRC moderators if and what we can 
do about it. But it is obvious that not getting any response is hard to 
fix :)

My personal opinion is that IRC is not the best strategy if you want a 
good reaction from the community. And my experience (on both sides of the 
fence) is that an IRC user typically wants immediate answers and often has 
unrealistic expectations. Not seldom a user left the channel before I was 
able to provide him with an answer...

So google, wiki, mailinglist and forums (in that order) provide a much 
better support environmment and IRC is more for informal communication and 
chit-chat. I don't think we have to expect more from it.

But it should never be a hostile environment.
-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at centos.org,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]