On a semi-related question, why is it that some people cannot stand even a couple of semi-related posts to a thread? Generally, things that got started by thread content, but went a bit awry. I understand that people can bring this to attention, but well, on a thread I was on, some people got seriously annoyed by a bit of OT posting. Even to the point of calling me and another poster some very inappropriate names. I dunno. Maybe this place really is, as one poster more or less put it, "only here to talk about linux". What do you all think?

I dunno, I guess I sometimes take things a bit personally when I shouldn't. But to be honest, I feel being part of this community is the one meaningful thing I can contribute to Linux/the Linux community. It's important to me.

If it's in General, people shouldn't complain.
If it's in Hardware, people should.

Nice essay. I have read that before. I think that's a lot less "outdated" and a lot more specific to LQ's community culture than ESR's essay. There are concepts and assumptions that ESR made then which are no longer valid today (regarding the "hacker" community).

What assumptions do you find no longer valid?

So, should I start a new thread in General and post a link to it in the other thread? I thought linking between threads like that was generally discouraged. I guess I'm trying to figure out how the community wants it handled.

Well, when he talks about the "attitudes" of the so-called "hacker" community and how the attitude of a majority is that you'll get a RTFM reply when you ask an obvious question or a not-so-well-researched question.

Although this does happen occasionally, these days I find that there are more and more people willing to answer questions even when they're not so well-researched. The onus he puts on the question asker is also too high. With such diagnostic skills we don't need to ask in a forum.

We got to accept that people *will* ask repetitive questions on a forum. IN fact, I would suggest that forums exist for that reason somewhat. While many of us appreciate people with good diagnostic and research skills, we got to accept that a lot of new Linux users don't have those skills or haven't developed them enough to ask an intelligent question.

ESR assumes that every question asker possesses the same degree of problem-solving skills and the same degree of intelligence. While this may have been somewhat accurate of the Linux/*nix community in the early days (say ten years ago) when only a relatively privileged few people used *nix, these days, we cannot assume that level of knowledge or even research/diagnostic skills. The so-called "hacker" culture also has changed a lot since then I believe. Most *nix communities are not only extremely helpful but also friendly beyond all expectations and certainly many of ESR's warnings to newbies about typical responses you would get from hackers are way off target in the current generation.

That's why I believe his article is outdated.

I suppose I'm partially inclined to agree. On the flip side, I sometimes wonder if a bit of "hard love" might not actually improve things. Some users are probably inclined to ask the same kind of easily-answered questions constantly.

Additionally, I'm not sure strong deductive skills mean a forum is useless. For example, I have a thread about my frequent hard lockups on my desktop, and while I feel I've gone through all the appropriate debugging measures, there's a lot that can be gleaned from the experiences of others.

I don't know why I take things so personally sometimes. *shrug* Oh well.

I've found it is very hard to change people. I think that the highest level of "hard love" that could be reasonably applied is to refer the questioner to links, rather than to answer the question directly. A way of in-directly nudging 'hey, you could search a bit" to the questioner as opposed to RTFM.
I've also noticed that as soon as a computer does something "un-expected", a lot of people freeze up. They discontinue the art of reading and generally panic. Perfectly logical, reasonably intelligent people exhibit this behavior around computers. How do I direct these users to "Google it" when they are so freaked out they can't read the error msg?
Then there is the whole subject of learning from text. There is a large portion of the public that can _not_ do it. You can give them a step-by-step tailored instruction set - they'll do that, they may even remember it next time, but they will never be able to wade through a Google listing and come up with the answer.
I see more and more people out there with great enthusiasm for computing and not the skill set for primarily going it alone. But they have a burning desire to be there and experience it. Should we humor them and answer for the 1,000th time that / is the root directory? Or should we slam the door on them and set a bar for admittance to the club?
In the end I think I'll just feel grateful to the responders to the legion of "duh" questions as well as the experienced who do not suffer fools lightly yet remain quiet in the face of such posts. All talents are necessary and welcome. I think linuxquestions has managed to cultivate a nice mix of the two.

Well put, calabash. I suppose I must agree with you. For as much as I love working here, I suppose there's only so much I (and we) can do. But I will continue to do what I can, and hopefully some people will be able to be helped without being spoon fed as a result.

I try to do this as much as possible, depending on how much effort I see on the part of the question asker. If someone simply says, "Which distro should I use?" I'll post a link to the distro chooser and won't say anything else. If someone shows a bit more initiative, I'll show matching initiative--maybe a link and a little bit of explanation. Every now and then, a question warrants a detailed response, and then I'll give one. I'm a newbie myself--I'm not some Linux veteran, but even I've found the answer to many of these questions by Googling them. If I find the question asker particularly annoying, I'll write something like, "Hm. I don't know, but when I did this Google search, I find this link."

actually, LQ has a really good search engine, it's is easier to find an answer on LQ using search than .......justlinux!! JL only has one input box..........while LQ has 4 input boxes.........one just needs to outline their search query words in a logical order............

Matir - to respond to your comments, just as a face to face conversation may meander from one topic to another, LQ threads can do the same thing and there's nothing wrong with that necessarily. IMO the problem is either when a thread gets hijacked or has strayed so far off the original topic that the latest replies really have nothing to do at all with the original topic. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules, but as an example, if a thread asks for help with setting up a dual boot XP/Debian system, and someone asks for suggestions on how to best partition the drive, in my view that's OK because partitioning decisions are an aspect of any dual boot system, and thus it's a reasonable extension of the original topic. However if the conversation then starts to get into discussions about, say, RAID then we're getting way off track, and that RAID question should be in its own thread. Similarly, it's generally frowned up when people tack on a completely unrelated question to an existing discussion (example: "OK, thanks for your suggestions, I got my scroll wheel to work! I'm also having trouble getting my printer to work - I have attempted to install CUPS but I can't seem to be able to get it to print the test page. How can I fix this.")

As for cross-linking your threads together, No, please don't do that. As the LQ Rules state, it is much better for conversations to exist in a single place rather than to be scattered all over the place. -- J.W.

JW - I agree completely with the first paragraph of your post. However, my point is this: in those cases where there is an unrelated discussion starting where more than one user is obviously in favor of the unrelated discussion, what is the best way to keep the OT discussion away from the original thread? I was thinking something along the lines of "Let's keep this thread on topic. I've started a new thread at _THREAD_ to discuss the other issues." I realize that generally linking threads is bad, but to me this seems like a couple of people stepping away from the main conversation when they want to go off in a different direction.

If one topic leads to another, it is bad IMHO to kill that discussion. Moving it to another thread dedicated to the new subject, or joining an already ongoing thread, is the best way to go. I think that if the discussion is interesting and people want to continue it, it should not be killed, just moved to a better place.

Never said it should be killed.

Oh well, I just try to do the best I can.