@hazel

That's another story for another day and many opinions as to who was right or wrong. Nowadays it hardly matters.

I can only say what I have always said: The old Debian forum was very 'no nonsense', it wasn't simply rude or "hostile" to the people who frequented it, but it got labelled as such by many new people - particularly those migrating from the ubuntu forums, who were used to the "happy clapping" cult forum approach of that place.

LQ is nothing like that, nor seems to be in danger of becoming like that - hence, to me, this all seems like a big fuss about nothing...

Part of what Hazel describes are inherent issues with being new to Linux. One of the other problems with frequent internet use, magnified by being new to an OS like Linux that requires the internet for its very existence, is that it's too easy to ask questions before trying exhaustively to answer a question yourself. Asking questions on LQ doesn't cost money. The main thing that weakened that habit for me, for better or worse, is years of frequent rudeness by other Linux users in response to my frequently committing this error. What I learned: if you don't want to risk rude responses, do not post until you've tried extensively to answer your own question and failed.

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That seems rather like a generalisation about a certain profession.

Being a programmer or not, has no bearing on this. Also Debian is a rather beginner friendly distribution (like ubuntu, etc), so that's not really accurate.

Many *nix users, especially advanced users, are simply very involved in the OS(s) they use and expect others to get involved in the same way, share the enthusiasm and learn for themselves rather than leaching off others - this is just not on the same wavelength as some freeloader, trying to pass an exam or plagiarise, copy and paste their way through some project/task their employer has set.

If you're not a leach, but get treated like one, then that's probably because of how your post was worded and because there are a lot of leaches out there. You can 'consider the climate' and shrug it off, or you can take it personally. We often choose to be offended.

It is? Being neither a Debian user nor part of this dark side of Linux culture, I'm hardly offended; but you're the first person I've heard claim Debian is beginner-friendly--especially, comparing it to Ubuntu. (That's bound to make some Debian geeks mad, especially considering that we just heard "you're trying to turn the Debian forum into the Ubuntu forum.") I'm not entirely disagreeing. I'd say there's nothing beginner-unfriendly about Debian once installed. It's only the Debian installer that's beginner-unfriendly. And even then, it requires only patience.

About 15 years ago I had just begun using Linux with Mandrake, which did not enable modems by default. Oh I solved that allright, I found I could trick the modem as root and get online. Great trick, right? I was not only a newbie I was a nab. I logged on to an IRC channel for Linux and asked a question and got nasty responses. I asked the most obnoxious person "Why so nasty? I just want help." and the next dew lines went like this....

NastyLinuxGuy - It's not my fault you have a ghetto box

Me ------------ It's not ghetto it's an Asus (list of epic hardware followed)

Nasty LinuxGuy - I'm not talking about your hardware. I'm talking about YOU! You are a ghetto admin so GTFO until you learn how to manage your box.

As you can see I still remember it vividly but even though I fumed for a couple days, after I calmed down I realized he was right and vowed to never login as root again, learn how to set up all my hardware, and manage my box properly. I sort of hate to admit it since I do subscribe to the old adage "you get more flies with honey than with vinegar" but the simple fact is NastyLinuxGuy made an impression that lasted and that gave me a swift kick I needed to really jump in with both feet. I am now very grateful.

Additionally I visit numerous sub forums pretty much daily and besides a year long break have done so for many years. There is only one other forums I subscribe to that has lasted with me that long and that one I only visit maybe once a week. I sincerely find this so addictive because it is refreshingly candid and adult and does not try to pander to children as the lowest common denominator as well as covers many subjects in which I am interested and most often in a very friendly manner.

I sincerely hope, Jeremy, that you can achieve the level of civility you desire without bending over for the all too common, so-called Politically Correct notions that are all over that result in pablum not fit for consumption. People need to experience strange views and yes, even get offended occasionally and learn to survive conflict gracefully. Irespect the need for civility but I'd hate to see this forum sink to the level of the robot police of THX-1138.

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I've only just noticed this thread, but why shouldn't I have my say?

I don't often use the general forum, but I think it serves a useful purpose — if only as a playpen. I'm not sure it needs cleaning up: it's much politer and friendlier than many forums on various topics I've posted in. I once used a forum which had a "dislike" button and where reputation was expressed descriptively. I left when my posts started to carry the label "DavidMcCann is infamous around here". Infamy, infamy — they all had it in for me!

Additional

170+ posts later, and perhaps there ought to be a summary of conclusions drawn by this discussion. I'm not doing that here, it is a thought which has struck me in reading the various replies over time.

Perhaps there ought to be a capability to have sticky replies at the top of threads so that good answers to questions do not get obfuscated into oblivion with tons of replies that are non-relevant or unhelpful.

Jeremy, only within the last few months have I become aware of the statement you make about replies being marked as highly useful, some number of helpful ticks, cause that reply to be put to the top of the view, like a sticky. I have never seen this phenomena. Any particular technical threads which you can cite? What are the number criteria for this status?

In late Summer of 2015 the helpfulness of LQ was discussed and I believe in this very forum. Jeremy invited members to use the canned Welcome to LQ! reply solely as a means to see how it worked. I did a blog entry on my experiments with it, here.

In some cases the canned response seemed too impersonal. Not the canned response itself, the just a reply citing that link. I feel we should say some nice comments and invite the OP to review that link.

In many cases, the OP never updated, nor returned.

My few conclusions now with the benefit of added experience an learning are:

1. Some OPs will never reply, never return, and we can't do much about that
2. Some OPs will never "get it", they think however oddly they think and they will persist in being obtuse. I feel this group are also a small percentage.
3. We gain nothing by repeated antagonism, or failing to be polite.
4. We also gain nothing with having 2, 5, or 10 of us reply to an OP's question where the OP doesn't return and "go on" with discussion or solutions, or start to jest the original question. This frustrates those who choose to persist or add and can scare or intimidate new or junior (pardon the use of term) members.

I do not feel simply using the Welcome to LQ canned reply is sufficient, I'd rather we add our personal welcomes and advise, and then as a group we also need to back off and allow threads to die, if they are never going to be updated by the OPs.

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That's horrible. "Nab"? I'm not even sure that word (obviously insulting, whatever it means) is currently used. I've never heard it on LQ.

Interestingly, I also started my Linux life with Mandrake. I no longer remember how I chose Mandrake, how I heard of it before other distros. But I went through four stages: Played around with Mandrake in 2003; eventually tried Xandros; lost interest and returned to Windows when I couldn't make the system work perfectly; then came back to Linux in 2005 when a Linux user showed me how to rescue my disabled hard drive's files with a Knoppix liveCD. In 2006, I tried MEPIS for some reason, and have been using the MEPIS family (MEPIS, antiX, MX) ever since.

I'm not sure how to put this but, as I've mentioned before, one thing people new to Linux suffer from (and those not so new, myself included) is "customer syndrome": If I buy a phone and the OS messes up I'll be sure to copmplain until it is fixed and the same goes for any other product I have bought.
That doesn't really work with Linux and I am not sure the best way to convey that to a newby (I spell it like that because thatKs how it was spelled in the mid-'80s at my school)?

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It's regrettable if *new users don't understand Linux sufficiently, but how can I ask them to? If they did first research Linux thoroughly enough to understand the culture, they arguably wouldn't be new to it when they started using Linux.

*(I don't want to say "newbies," much less "noobs," because of the bullying connotations)

And yes, using root for any reason is certainly the issue that provokes rude responses the most easily. If one ever uses root for any reason for any length of time, it's best to never mention it.

Why would one use anything without researching it?

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http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...failed-795339/ is an example. Based on feedback, we made a change a while back that went from showing the post out of order to what you see in the linked thread.

There is a new thread dedicated to the new volunteer group who will be using the canned response. A couple comments, however:

* The canned response will not simply be a link to the Welcome to LQ FAQ entry.
* The responses will only be aimed at a very specific, very narrow type of thread.
* In the context of that, everyone simply adding their personal welcomes and advise is not scalable or sustainable. It doesn't allow all LQ members to know the thread in question will be properly addressed so they can focus their efforts elsewhere, it does not allow us to track how prevalent the issue is or get any meaningful data at all, it does not allow us to to help educate new members who make posts of this nature or track that they don't continue doing so without repercussion.

--jeremy

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Absorb the full context of what I said: researching it sufficiently enough to understand the Linux culture in addition to the operating system. To have some idea beforehand how to deal with the behavior of advanced users who have little patience for them, and how to modify their own behavior appropriately. I should realistically expect new users to do that?

This is the quandary. If I were to buy a Mac I would expect certain things, because I paid for them. I would choose a Mac because I wanted those things and was willing to pay the price.
How is that different to using Linux? I'm being harsher here than I would be to a newcomer but, really, exactly why would one expect any help at all using something given away for free the point of which can often be that anyone can modify it? If somebody comes to Linux so ignorant that they didn't bother to read about what it actually means then how are they to be helped anyhow? The Wikipedia article on Linux ought to give a good idea what one is getting into using it -- how is somebody who can't even find the time to glance at that going to deal with any system issues?
Better, I say, that people who don't want to learn pay Apple to take their problems away rather than expecting to be treated like customers using Linux.
The above is a rant, and a little more extreme than I would ever reply. It is a rant against wilful ignorance rather than newbys.