I appears that the real problem lies in getting people to actually describe their problem in the subject line. Perhaps increasing the dimensions of the relevant field to, I don't know, the same width as the body text field, or maybe doubling the height, would encourage people to be more verbose when describing their problem; I, for one, have felt constrained by the apparent lack of space on several occasions. OTOH, such changes could require some fairly tedious alterations to the forum's layout in order just to make it look right, and I'm sure jeremy could give a fairly lengthy list of unpleasant tasks of which I can't even imagine that would need to be done to make it work right!
Perhaps I will just force myself to be more descriptive in the future, that would probably cause fewer problems all around (I think I have given jeremy enough headaches, no need to generate more).

For example,

site:linuxquestions.org which distro should i use?

I agree with these views, meaning the RFTM attitude is what would ultimately bore the new people wanting to give linux a fair try.
I have no complaints about the same questions asked all the time. When you're new, you don't know there is a search feature, you
just want to see your own issue addressed. Even when it is not very satisfactory and you don't understand the answer properly, it
gives you a feeling of reassurance and helps you get along. That's why these forums are the best. Newbies are treated as human
beings, not as crap. People are not meant to be smarter, they are just what they are.
Just my view.
cheers

You see, this just encourages laziness - when you buy a new car, you are expected to familiarise yourself with it. How often do you see a driver stop someone and say "where are the windscreen wipers?"

LQ is not someone's personal search site. Most forums insist that members lurk before posting and I know that a number of our members have done that here. If it takes around a minute to Google for a common answer and get the answer, or an hour to post a question and hope that one of our volunteers will give the required response, which is the more efficient method?

Everyone here, even Jeremy, does LQ on their own time. No one is being paid to answer questions and none of us make our living here. Sheer politeness should make someone search around first and then post to say "I went to Google and couldn't find the answer, searched here with the same result. Here is my problem. It is possible that I am asking the wrong question. Could you point me in the right direction please"

Okay,

If that was what people REALLY did, you would not have the same threads all over again.
I think this is a white wish and I see more and more people asking all over again the same
thing.

Even yourself have to acknowledge that fact.. How many times have you answered the same
question ? How many real NEW questions are answered instead of ALWAYS the old ones ?
How many people would return here if they did not know that their questions would ultimately
find some kind of answer ? This site has grown because, IMO, newbies' questions are not scorned
or do not have a RFTM answer.

Your parallel with car driving is irrelevant, because you have much fewer things to learn to be able
to drive a car. Only retards (sorry for the word) are not able to pass a driving license.
This is not a kinda world in which you can tell people not to be lazy, they just don't care and want
what they ask.

Don't get me wrong, it would be nice if everybody was hard-working, willing to learn (I'm a teacher, I know
what I am talking about), but it's just not the truth.
Perhaps Jeremy and the other mods and all he great people here would not be very happy to see a decrease
in traffic due to people learning and not relying on you... Because, come on, everybody seeks some kind of
self-gratification in the process, it's not just for the willingness of 'helping' people.

Because it's what I call HYPOCRISY if it is the case : complaining about people and be pleased they visit your site...
And all for peanuts ? come on ..

Well, don't blame me too much, it's just that I can't really stand the attitude from some members (mods are perfect, everybody knows that ) wishing that so-called useless questions (they were happy to see answered when some of them asked them, among whichI was, no doubt) just sort of patronize the new people here.

But it's common to many places, once you get a hint
of know-how and the polish is off, you seem to think other people are silly with their boring questions.
Wow, that was quite long. Sorry again.

cheers

I agree with what you are saying - especially the comment about the mods But if you see a question which says "urgent! must find the best distro" or "urgent! how do I install a file", what would your response be? Searching via LQ, Google or whatever means is always, but always, the best and most efficient way. I have lost count of the number of threads I have seen where the question posted and the responses received don't match simply because the poster didn't take the time to explain themselves.

At this time of writing, the stats are: with those sorts of numbers, why would anyone assume off the bat that their question hasn't already been asked/answered?

My gripe is that most new members will join to say that they have left the dark side and want to use an OS that will make them think and learn and then proceed to do absolutely no research whatsoever.

I can't speak for anyone else here, but I'm not annoyed by people asking questions. I'm annoyed by people showing no initiative whatsoever to search for the answer themselves. I'm more than happy to answer questions when people have said, "I tried doing xyz, and I searched Google and found abc, but when I tried that I got def. Now I get this error message when I try to do ghi. Am I doing something wrong?" I'm frustrated when people say, "I can't get my xyz to work. Help me NOW!"

There are a few problems with posts of the second variety, and that's where the frustration comes from--it's not that people don't want to help others:

1. An assumption that help can be demanded and with a very definite time frame (now). No one here is being paid. We're a community. We try to help others in the community. There is no paid tech support. There are no lackies here. No one is here to do your bidding. Ask nicely.

2. Absolutely no details. As Cuba Gooding, Jr. is famous for saying in Jerry Maguire, "Help me help you. Help me... help... you." If you're the one asking for help, you'd better offer some help to the people you're asking a favor from.

3. And, as mentioned before, no sign of initiative. No sign that the person even tried looking for a solution.

I think you're arguing with a straw man. No one has said, "We've got to stop newbies from asking questions. All the answers are clearly here." What's ideal is one of the following situations:

1. Newbie searches and finds an answer--helps point other newbies to that answer

2. Newbie searches but cannot find an answer. Mentions a lot of specifics in question.

3. Newbie searches but cannot find an answer. Even though the general question has been asked before, there are specifics unique to newbie's situation.

Is this ever going to happen? No. But that's what I'm dreaming of. I'm not dreaming that newbies will just go away and stop asking questions (it is Linux Questions after all). I myself am a newbie, and I ask questions.

Having been a teacher as well, on more than one occasion I've chastised students for asking questions we just answered ten minutes before in class. Now, if the student asks exactly the same question, that student is annoying and wasn't paying attention and deserves to be chastised. If the student, however, prefaces the question by saying, "Sure, I know we said blah blah blah before, but I was thinking, what about in this situation?" then she was paying attention but has a fresh spin on the question.

Likewise, a "How do I get my screen resolution to work?" question is stupid. But if someone says, "I know I have to adjust my vertical and horizontal refresh ranges in /etc/X11/xorg.conf because that's what people have been saying to do, but I have this obscure brand of monitor, and I can't find out what my refresh ranges are," that's a new question worth answering.

Don't polarize people on this forum as either willing to put up with anything newbies do and people who don't want to put up with anything. There's a nice grey area.

These discussions are very interesting, and I hope those who have been venting now feel better.

However, they are off topic. As I see it, the subject is helping people, particularly newcomers, to search LQ. At this time, there is no tutorial on searching LQ, no FAQ, no explicit forum topic, no help function on the search page, NADA.

As far as I can tell, the built-in search, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/search.php
is seriously flawed, yet this is where a newcomer is likely to go.

It is rather unfair to criticize newbies for not searching, when you give no guidance on how to do so and the obvious tool doesn't work well.

L Squared, while the current search isn't perfect (far from it in fact), I can't see where it's "seriously flawed". Care to elaborate on that statement a bit?

--jeremy

Perhaps if we could filter out common words such as "I" "a" "am" "can't" etc...
This way, we're using more of a keyword search, instead of a sentence search...

What do you think?

Many common words are filtered out by FULLTEXT.

--jeremy

IMHO: What is sorely lacking is a search by forum.

I want to find a post I saw on: distro fedora

With one simple option I could narrow down the excess information.

Maybe I can't see it 'cause it is hidden right in front of me
<This has been known to happen>

I'm pretty sure what forum I want. Is this not a pro-active option?

Just for fun see if you can find it: I read a posting last night where one chap from Australia was chatting with another bloke from India. (They even mentioned timezones!)

The 'poster' was asking about boot issues. Seems he had to put the Windows CD in before he could load his sole-boot-fedora-box.

Do I not have enough choice words for a Search?

Nope. (And no, I didn't put the hyphen's in my search).

I half to search the whole world or at least all of LQ.

Needless to say.....

OK. Mebbe I was on Newbies when I read that . I will go back to check.
Now I want a search by forum list, where you an add one or two...

Always a better way
Cheers,
alar

BTW: There were at least four prolly more replys to the message I want to find.
Couldn't see it on Newbies either.

What does search by FULLTEXT mean?

You can search by forum. Simply pick the forum you want from the "Search Forum..." dropdown.

--jeremy

Cut and Paste comes in handy

Search forum!?!

There she is,
right in front of me!

Thanks Jeremy!

Honest I looked!