It is clear that the signal to noise ratio of the WWW is getting worse. It’s much harder to find good content when using a good old search engine. And if it’s good it is usually hosted on Reddit or Stackexchange.
So remember, even if it’s easy too Google something (well, it isn’t nowadays), we want to create a fediverse of good content that helps people (I hope). So, it’s always better to write a real answer if you have the time and energy. Please help boost the SNR and reverse the AI fueled information degradation loop.
“Check the documentation” should absolutely be a retort though.
One of my least favorite things about the fediverse (and especially Discord and Reddit) is members asking the same simple question hundreds of times because they didn’t bother to do a simple search and didn’t bother to check obvious documentation.
They didn’t know the documentation exists? OK, I will happily show you, and show you how to find it in general. Question only partially novel? Great, I will link an old answer and explain the rest… But I am kinda fed up with how “ephemeral” social media is, which is by design, as that repetitiveness increases engagement dramatically. Many forums should be structured more like a wiki, and its users should reflect that.
That kind of behavior can also be a sign that the documentation is hard to find or hard to comprehend. Or that something isn’t documented at all, but the seniors imagine it is, because the answer is obvious to them.
Me. This is me. I’m trying to figure out linux.
“How do I do…something”
“Oh, that’s easy! Just do this and this and this. Make sure you check that that and that.”
“Ok…now how do I do the things you just said?”
“Just do those things the right way.”
“I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE TERMS MEAN, LET ALONE HOW TO DO THEM!!!”
“Ugh, this guy can’t even follow simple directions. What part of that do you not understand???”
“Uhhhhhh…core concepts?”
Good luck with Linux. Sorry you have to deal with people who don’t know how to teach new users.
And then you have all the people who tell you you’re using the wrong flavor of linux and if you knew anything you would have used the version they’re using. BITCH YOU’VE BEEN TELLING ME THAT I WAS USING THE WRONG OS FOR YEARS AND NOW I SWITCH AND I’M STILL DOING IT WRONG?!
Average Familiarity
Maybe start with the core concepts first then, instead of diving in headfirst and flailing about.
I don’t even know what the core concepts are. I’m still unclear by what a snapback or a flatpak are, but apperently there’s drama if you pick one over the other depending on who you ask.
But I know they install programs…but I wouldn’t say I know what they are.
Snap is Ubuntu proprietary. Flatpak is community. That should be all you need to know to pick one over the other.
Personally I prefer standard distro packages. If I want a container, I use a container.
Use the Source, Luke!
cmake comes to mind: I can find the docs for whatever function I want to use, but I honestly have such a hard time comprehending what they mean. It’s especially frustrating because I can tell that all the information is there, and it’s just me not being able to understand it, so I don’t want to ask others for help, cause then I’m just bothering people with a problem that I’ve in principle already found the answer to, I’m just not able to apply the answer.
Then again, I’ve heard plenty of other people complain that the cmake docs are hard to understand…
I can relate to this. And off the record (I know it’s not always a super appreciated opinion in the Fediverse): for this kind of problem I find that LLMs help a lot.
Absolutely, throwing together some simple cmake is actually a great use-case for an LLM. Once I have something basic up and running, I can play around with it and figure out how stuff works much more easily
Maybe they read the documentation and the documentation doesn’t clearly answer their question.
You can always just ignore their question if you don’t want to answer. Let someone else do it.
Rtfm and LMGTFY by themselves aren’t useful. They’re the equivalent of posting “me too”.
If you think that the answer is in the manual and they haven’t read it, post a link to the manual. Double helpful if you reference the section.
If you think the answer is on Google, I think we can assume everyone knows to try that first, so then no reply is needed. If it’s a particularly tricky search to phrase, maybe help with a link with a searchable phrase in it.
But not replying is always a useful thing to do if you’re not adding to the conversation.
Check the documentation can be pretty useless a lot of times. The docs aren’t always great or they’re huge and I have a specific question. Often times I do check them, but they’re incomplete or unclear. Or the docs change or the links die.
Just answer the question anyway and then say where you found it.
If you say as much in your question, you’re much less likely to get someone saying “rtfm”.
Or the docs are just out of date and literally don’t mention this feature added 2 years ago.
To me this is where communities having a maintained wiki is great. More than once it’s saved me from asking a question that’s already been answered a hundred times before.
Right, and sealioning is also a thing. If we are having a conversation where there is a presumed knowledge of some basic informationor background, I’m not going to sit here and restate that entire basis just because you got in over your head.
Okay, you’re not required to snarkily broadcast that in the conversation, though. You could just ignore it.
definitely helps to bow out instead of talking down to a beginner. “it seems you’re having an issue with X, I would recommend reading up on Y and Z because [how they relate to your problem]” is helpful, a very natural stopping point, is useful to people who search and find the thread in the future.
Lemmy documentation is fucking terrible.
Ive submitted PRs for documentation to some Foss projects (not just in the fediverse space) that were rejected by the owners.
It is some FOSS projects intention to intentionally add obscurity to their product, specifically when they monetize by paid hosting.
Funny, I wrote plenty of documentation and release notes. In some cases I even got direct commit permissions to the repositories after a while.
And if monetized projects want to have obscure docs: edit the Arch wiki.
Yeah, me too. Im not suggesting all devs are assholes, but Lemmy is one example.
When that happens I do publish the docs online and call out the devs for back stabbing their community.