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Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-04 18:21
by Lysander
golinux wrote:So what exactly happened to dasein?

He is still registered and it's possible to send him a PM which I did several weeks ago. When he didn't pick it up, I started to poke around and saw this thread (to which I had cluelessly posted).

He was by far one of the best things going for this forum and I'm bummed that there's a possibility that he is really gone, gone and not just taking a break.
Yes - he is really gone, gone. He was getting increasingly disillusioned with the quality of posting on this forum. That, combined with his leaving Debian come Wheezy's EOL made his posting here rather futile. He won't be making a return. I have also noticed the decline in the relatively short time I have been here.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-04 18:37
by dcihon
Sorry to jump in here but what does this mean:
He was getting increasingly disillusioned with the quality of posting on this forum.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-04 18:47
by Lysander
dcihon wrote:Sorry to jump in here but what does this mean:
He was getting increasingly disillusioned with the quality of posting on this forum.
Try 'disappointed', then. And that's putting it mildly.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-04 23:51
by n_hologram
If you read through his post hisory, it's evident that he spent a lot of time recently saying the same things over and over again.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 00:23
by bw123
n_hologram wrote:If you read through his post hisory, it's evident that he spent a lot of time recently saying the same things over and over again.
A common thing to do when you see the same questions asked over and over again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
dasein wrote: User statistics Joined: 2011-03-03 21:06 Last visited: - Total posts: 7775 | Search user’s posts (1.28% of all posts / 3.00 posts per day)

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 01:48
by n_hologram
Lol that was the implication. I'll have to compile his criticisms against wannabe hackers sometime.

His leaving, I suppose, means he is no Sisyphus.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 06:18
by dcihon
A common thing to do when you see the same questions asked over and over again.
So how would you stop people from posting the same questions over and over again.
I have been accused of this from time to time. I do make my best effort and not trying to do it but it sometimes is going to happen.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 12:54
by n_hologram
There isn't.

Most rookie/novice users need small amounts of guidance from time to time. However, if a user isn't going to read and research on their own, there's nothing that can stop them from posting their own iteration of a well-documented query.

dasein actually created a substantial thread documenting at least ten or twelve cases where repo-mixing destroyed a system in some way or another. You should not be surprised at how often that thread was linked to other threads based on the same concept.

One of the best ways to help others help themselves is to ignore the thread. However, one can only ignore so many threads before virtually every thread is ignored. In that case, it sounds like time to find a new community.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 21:07
by NFT5
dcihon wrote:So how would you stop people from posting the same questions over and over again.
Create a culture where members are encouraged to search for information rather than taking the lazy way out and just asking with the expectation of being spoon fed.

That takes a long time and needs support from both members and Moderators who view and treat the forum as an information resource, a library if you will, where information is kept in a single place. A new thread asking a common question may just get a response of a link to a search and then locked. After a while the other members will do the same thing - reply just with a link and then a Mod comes along later and locks the thread or moves the posts to another where the question has been answered.

Another very useful thing is to create a Forum Directory - a thread (stickied or linked in the forum header) listing all the common questions and links to the threads that cover those. Call it an Index if you like.

Limitation of the ability for new members to create new threads until they have a few posts already. Alternately, require the first few thread creations by new members to be approved by a Moderator (this creates a lot of work for the Mods), or better, a warning when a new member creates a thread that they should search first. This does work, to a degree, but the lazy ones just ignore it anyway.

There are some forums where asking a question commonly asked and answered will earn you an instant banning. This is, IMHO, a bit extreme, but the message does get through and new members are warned, repeatedly, of the consequences. If they really want to be part of the forum then they will comply.

If it's all done the right way then these measures do work. I'm involved with another forum of similar size to this one. It has 536431 posts compared to FDN's 606760, but only 17231 topics compared to 89595 here. Threads tend to be much longer but finding stuff is just so much easier, even with the limitations of the phpBB forum software. There are fewer members there but a much higher percentage of those are active because they value the forum not just as an information resource but as a community. We found that forum activity dropped somewhat as social media, particularly Facebook, grew, but the Groundhog Day nature of Facebook meant that members have come back, appreciating the more permanent nature of the forum format.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 21:42
by golinux
NFT5 wrote:
dcihon wrote:So how would you stop people from posting the same questions over and over again.
Create a culture where members are encouraged to search for information rather than taking the lazy way out and just asking with the expectation of being spoon fed.
It used to be that way but that ship has sailed and unlikely to return to port. These days "instant" spoonfeeding is expected by an 'entitled' generation with too many toys and an increasingly third-world education/indoctrination.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 22:02
by NFT5
Depends on how hard you try, golinux.

We experienced similar a few years ago and, as I mentioned, forum activity dropped as the more instant gratification of Facebook offered what the entitled generation wanted. The effect was compounded by the manufacturer changing marketing emphasis and targeting the younger generation with a cheaper product.

But, many came back and membership is growing again with new members prepared to live with the way that forum operates for the advantage of having the information they want, available.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 22:36
by n_hologram
NTF5: in addition, other forums have features that will skim posts for whether or not that content already exists. In other communities, including (interestingly) Ubuntu's, it encourages individual research through some level of personal guilt, because it sends a message of "I can't believe you didn't type this into the search bar, way to go." However, as you said, that would require work that may never be invested. It would also take away from the whole "do your own research without someone telling you first" approach ;) To his credit, though, this thread's creator is a consistent advocate for new users' questions.

Trying to really understand the backends that are now completely overshadowed by frontends (power managers and the like) is quite confusing. There are questions that you never knew to ask until certain situations arise. Sometimes there are small search terms or principles that you may be blissfully unaware of, traces of obscure features in the backend that may not be immediately obvious, even after reading and personal research.

What I've seen change the most in seven years of using some form of linux is the priority on frontends with convoluted backends; it was a practice that I find disinteresting and brought me to Debian in the first place, and paradoxically, the distro I chose as a way to get around that is now suffering from that root cause. Because of systemd, for example, one cannot easily use a desktop environment's power or session manager without either relying on systemd utilities (I think the big one was libpam/policykit-1 or something), or blindly crapshooting through other utilities which may or may not be related to one's issue, finding unrelated posts and users who post simple answers, too. Let's be fair: how much has power management and network interfacing changed in the last few years? (And which company had the greatest influence in determining that change? Countless documentations are now completely obsolete, but not because users demanded they be, and not because it solved any user-driven issues, either.) I find it understandable that most users face this and succumb to an easier route, even if that route is abandoning linux, because if the answers lie beneath layers of corporate decisions, there's really no difference.

And in defense of the oblivious and the oblivious-to-be, it's also understandable why these simple questions will overwhelm our communities, because users want a nice frontend -- until it stops working. Unlike RHEL Enterprise users, they will have no one who gets paid to answer questions, and will increasingly rely on volunteers: aka, us. RHEL makes money off this for the same reasons as Apple and Volkswagen; easy solutions are not a profitable industry.

Unfortunately, there is no Debian paid support, yet Debian's ecosystem is now rooted in new layers of a corporate distribution's actions. Here we are back at the original point. The impetus behind this thread's original post exemplifies the dead optimism that comes to life in the same way as a mannequin: namely, there is no linux revolution in an environment where corporate interests take precedence. If users are the revolution, it is clear that Debian novices are not interested in revolt, and those who are have begun other projects or invested themselves in other Debian derivatives.

I don't see that changing.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-05 23:07
by golinux
@n_hologram . . . well said.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-07 15:54
by bw123
golinux wrote:@n_hologram . . . well said.
That was a great post, but the issue about power management rang a bell for me...
n_hologram wrote: Because of systemd, for example, one cannot easily use a desktop environment's power or session manager without either relying on systemd utilities (I think the big one was libpam/policykit-1 or something), or blindly crapshooting through other utilities which may or may not be related to one's issue, finding unrelated posts and users who post simple answers, too. Let's be fair: how much has power management and network interfacing changed in the last few years?
I don't know how much power management has changed, but it still sucks, and it sucked before systemd. Power management is complicated, but it's not systemd that made it that way...

On the thing about new users wanting to take the easy way out... well, yeah I was the same way. I probably posted a dozen or more simple questions on here when I was a newbie. I still get confused over simple things sometimes. I don't think the forum should change, or try to restrict anything through automatic censoring or extreme moderating or approving posts.

I think we should all remember what it was like to be brand new to linux, and help people learn to help themselves and how to find the info. And try to clean up the lame posts with good links to current information, all the while realizing that the posts we make may be obsolete in the future.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-07 16:50
by Dai_trying
+101
bw123 wrote:I think we should all remember what it was like to be brand new to linux, and help people learn to help themselves and how to find the info. And try to clean up the lame posts with good links to current information, all the while realizing that the posts we make may be obsolete in the future.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-07 19:11
by Wheelerof4te
@bw123 and n_hologram
There are some really nice posts on the previous page, and yours in particular are ones of the best seen on this forums as far as I recall.
bw123 wrote: And try to clean up the lame posts with good links to current information, all the while realizing that the posts we make may be obsolete in the future.
This is the first time I see someone actually mentions the fact that information new users seek now may be different than the one found in old answers. As each new Debian version is radically different than the previous one, it makes sense to ask the same question again every once in a while.

In fact, you have countered my original post, and proved that this forum has the quality of Debian itself.

Re: DUF is not Debian

Posted: 2018-04-07 19:48
by golinux
Wheelerof4te wrote: As each new Debian version is radically different than the previous one, it makes sense to ask the same question again every once in a while.
There has only been one "radically different" Debian version and that was the move to systemd. The current unholy mess which requires "retraining" replaces code that had remained modular and stable for a very long time. That shift is undoubtedly by design as suggested in n_hologram's excellent summary of the corporate doodoo in which Debian is now buried.

This was foreshadowed by the Gnome/GTK3 fiasco. Same mentality.

Re: DUF is (not) Debian

Posted: 2018-04-07 20:05
by Wheelerof4te
^Don't you worry, there is no corporate doodooers in Debi...
*sees Debian on the WSL*
*SCREAMS IN AGONY*

Re: DUF is (not) Debian

Posted: 2018-04-07 21:48
by golinux
Wheelerof4te wrote:^Don't you worry, there is no corporate doodooers in Debi...
*sees Debian on the WSL*
*SCREAMS IN AGONY*
I suggest that you research the affiliations of the members of the Debian technical committee.

Re: DUF is (not) Debian

Posted: 2018-04-07 22:22
by acewiza
Spoon-feeding babies is how they grow. :wink: