julian67 wrote:mdevour wrote:So what I'm hearing is, there really isn't a problem with anybody on this board having a less-than-welcoming attitude for new people, or ever being impatient or rude except under severe provocation; and much fear that any change to the forum guidelines or style of moderation is a slippery slope to terror and tyranny.
Therefore, I'd suggest the following as a compromise...
The admins set up the beginners' forum however they choose to describe it...
If the first paragraph is broadly true then what is the point exactly?
Well, I didn't think of it to suggest it, but I think it's a good idea for several reasons...
I think that it's a modest bit of outreach that our community could do to attract a few people we'd otherwise miss by reassuring them that we really would like to address their "silly" or "stupid" or otherwise tentative beginners' questions.
If that were successful, we would gain, a) new users for Debian, and b) new members for the forums, some of whom will eventually go on to help shoulder the load here. We might also gradually rehabilitate the forums' reputation, if such is really needed.
It follows that we would actually go ahead and answer their questions in a reasonably kindly way, and that we (well, the mod-staff, actually) would not allow abusive treatment of any kind to become a
prominent feature of at least that part of the board, thus preserving our hopefully improving reputation as a good place to get help.
I don't think any of those would be bad things to accomplish.
If we go back to Absent Minded's original post...
Absent Minded wrote:I have been asked by a few people now about creating a forum section for beginners as many here do not wish to answer beginners questions it would then be left to those of us that don't mind giving answers to these types of questions. So, My question is this: How many of you are in support of there being a new section strictly for beginner questions? At this point there is nothing official planned. I am just trying to get an idea of things for future reference.
He asserts the notion that some folks don't like answering beginner questions and some do. Maybe he's right or maybe not. Maybe the ones who complained the most about stupid newby questions aren't here any more, or people like me have just imagined all the times I've read detailed discourses on what people have to do in order to "deserve" help.
I, personally, would prefer going a little out of my way to see if I can help even somebody who gets off on the wrong foot. It usually won't work out, but I like to think there's a chance, anyway. However, people with shorter fuses than mine are going to decide that said person "deserves" to be driven off... and their victims go away and tell other people how hard we were on them, and lurkers read those threads and decide they'd rather not deal with people like us...
Sound familiar?
Yeah, I know, you can't find all that many cases. But how many does it take, left unchallenged, before an impression is made and a reputation is formed?
So that's another reason I'd like to see this tried. If the experiment can be done without demanding anything from the people who don't want to be involved in it, except that they leave it alone so we can do our work, I'm perfectly happy to leave them alone as well.
But, if, as you say, we don't dare change anything about the way the forums are moderated or organized, that things here are so sensitively balanced that we'll inevitably see it come crashing down around our ears if we ask anybody to do anything the least bit different, why, I guess then it's not a good idea.
btw I think impatience and rudeness are hardly unusual here but they seem mostly absent when people answer beginners' questions. Probably because rudeness and impatience are usually expressed by people who already don't much like each other, that being a normal part of the variety of life.
In another of your posts a few hours ago you mentioned some of the "scary" behavior that you saw occasionally before you joined. I imagine I'm responding to much the same things. I would see some new guy driven off by rude ad hominem barbs that had no reason for being at all, except to relieve the impulse of the fool who made them. At least that's how I saw the situation. Others thought it was okay and even great fun.
I've seen a couple of really competent, helpful contributors driven away from the forums by idiots who thought it's a privilege to be insulted by them. And when, like me, they dared to suggest that something was wrong with this, they were told they're in the wrong. The trouble was that nobody in authority here ever said a thing to disagree. Thus those few set the tone here, month after month, and we'll never know how many people haven't joined because that's what they saw when they were searching the forums.
These are my impressions of my experience with this forum. The bad side has been balanced many times over by the generous people who've helped me dozens of times, and the dozens more times I've been able to search up the answers I needed on my own. But there's been damage done, IMO, and no denials of its existence will change what I've seen and make me believe that nothing can be learned and nothing should ever be changed.
It's not up to me, 'cause I don't run the place, but that's why I think the new forum is a good idea. The folks that do run the place deserve our thanks -- lots. These forums are a valuable resource that exists because they're willing to devote themselves to it. If they want to do something different that might make it better, I'd say this is a good one to try.
Mike D.
