> On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 21:37 -0600, Charles Howse wrote: >> I'd like to start a calm, respectful, reasonable discussion of the reasons >> that we tell people to RTFM, or reasons that people don't get their >> questions answered on mailing lists and usenet groups. > > When I first started using Linux, there were several times when I tried > to RTFM but completely failed. Often it was because I simply did not > understand the manual. My first experience with Linux was when I bought a book about Linux that contained Red Hat 5. Didn't know what a man page was until I finished reading the book. Today I am still dumbfounded sometimes by the lack of help contained in a man page, or by the over abundance of terms that I have to stop and look up, then try and understand whether that applies to my situation. > This was with ppc so people were kinder because it was a smaller group, Yep, there's a ratio hiding in that statement somewhere...as the size of the group goes up, the kindness factor goes down..?
