Rule enforcement

LVLouisCyphre

LVLouisCyphre

If you've been following or watching me, you know there are two users here that royally piss me off;
  • Posters/commentators who don't RTFM. All of us here have a basic understanding that everyone here does RTFM. I knew what RTFM meant over 30 years when I maintained a UUCP site and had an email bang path @ nosc.mil in San Diego and had a shell account on cts.com (Crash Time Sharing run by Bill Blue of ASCII Express fame). Yes, I'm that fsck(8)ing old. If there's a FM abiguity, we all want to get this cleared up to help the community. There are bugs in manuals just as much as code as we all very well know.
  • Posters/commentators who are Linux (Lummux) users. I just commented on a ZFS discussion and this person is a Lummux user, not a FreeBSD user.
If you need an enforcer to deal with these people, I'm volunteering. I don't tolerate this on forums I've modded or own.
 
Humm, and here I thought they had this thing called ZFS on Linux .. I could be mistaken .. regardless .. this kind of trash message is the only thing that deserves to be banned.
 
While I see OPs point, I don't think that yelling at people who don't RTFM will do anything good.
The best to do IMHO is pointing people to the manual that they're supposed to read.
And as far as I can tell, that's exactly what most people here are doing. :)

And if someone decides to take the time to add additional info, and that pisses you off, then that's your problem.

Again, I see where you're coming from. I've seen multiple questions that genuinely bothered me for that exact reason. But me being bothered by this just means I'm becoming a grumpy fart 🥳
 
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LVLouisCyphre said:
If you need an enforcer to deal with these people, I'm volunteering. I don't tolerate this on forums I've modded or own.
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While I understand your frustration, you have to remember that we were all new once. Wouldn't be more constructive to point people in the right direction than to put down the ban hammer on somebody who didn't read the docs? I'd rather see a more welcoming and open BSD community and not have it turn into some of the Linux communities that will tear a newbie to pieces.
 
m0nkey_ said:
turn into some of the Linux communities that will tear a newbie to pieces.
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HaHa, that is partially why I am on FreeBSD. I started off with pfSense and became enamoured with software Wireless Access Points and moved from pfSense WAP to Arch. I asked a silly question on the Arch forum. I got hammered. I swore to them I would never be back. I kept my promise. A couple of years ago I saw the saw the same heckling Arch forum handle on here. I wanted to attack him back, but I kept my cool.

I also followed with much grief a thread where drhowarddrfine corrected someones spelling error and was being heckled.
Really pissed me off because we strive to be a technical forum and many helpers here are distinguished programmers.
I feel that programmers are nitpicks but that is why they are so special. One wrong syntax and you have failure.
So you could say that programmers are perfectionists. I understand why he corrected a user.
But the attacks were uncalled for. Right is right and wrong is wrong. This is not subjective.
Too bad if the user was offended being corrected. He was wrong. To attack a helper for correcting a wrong is bad form.
 
SKull said:
Again, I see where you're coming from. I've seen multiple questions that genuinely bothered me for that exact reason. But me being bothered by this just means I'm becoming a grumpy fart 🥳
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I prefer the term curmudgeon.
m0nkey_ said:
While I understand your frustration, you have to remember that we were all new once.
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I also learned to RTFM before I graduated high school. FreeBSD also has the handbook which is IMO very well written. Kudos to the maintainers. The man pages are also pretty well written. One of the reasons I use FreeBSD is how damned well it's documented.

I've seen people here who have a much better reputation than me post BSD 101 questions. It falls under the same classification as having the annoying crying and screaming baby on a commercial flight or one in the back of your vehicle saying, "Are we there yet?"

We had a mantra started at my former place of employment, "technology is not for everyone," I'm sure many of us can say, "(Free)BSD isn't for everyone."
 
LVLouisCyphre said:
I've seen people here who have a much better reputation than me post BSD 101 questions.
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The problem arises because we don't work in all areas all the time and forget things. In my case, I was surrounded by experts who could answer all my questions as I moved into management. Now that I don't do that anymore, I find I've forgotten a lot of the basics and need a quick answer.

I'm an upper 2% rep user of Stack Overflow and have moderator privileges. It drives me crazy there when I can tell someone has made no attempt to search on SO or Google for a common problem. I go straight to working on closing the question without comment. I no longer comment for the same reason mentioned by Phishfry. Minor corrections or explaining the rules get push back from people who don't care and only follow a "be nice" mentality and the rules be damned.

LVLouisCyphre said:
We had a mantra started at my former place of employment, "technology is not for everyone," I'm sure many of us can say, "(Free)BSD isn't for everyone."
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I always like the quote in my signature.
 
yup your always going to get people like that ... however my objection is about how this thread got started in the first place ...

message
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/ecc-or-non-ecc.63383/page-3
user
I don't care what you personally use. Just please stop scaring hobbyists into choosing ext4-based Linux NAS solutions. This is completely counterproductive.
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response
This is a FreeBSD forum; not Lummux. Since you're here on your high penguin, you should be ban hammered.[/qoute]
resulted in this post ..
Posters/commentators who are Linux (Lummux) users. I just commented on a ZFS discussion and this person is a Lummux user, not a FreeBSD user.
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taken from from rules
7. We will not allow technical/support questions about any operating system other than FreeBSD anywhere on this forum. That includes the Off-Topic forum. Always ask technical/support questions about other operating systems on the forums or mailing lists associated with those operating systems.
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I really don't see how this one users comment breaks any sort of request for help with something other than FreeBSD, or a linux problem .. or how it breaks forum rules..

my point is .. this kind of response reflects poorly on the entire community.. Albeit... If someone posts something that's against the rules, fine .. Off with their head .. but offering yourself as a vigilante for something this trivial is just ridiculous!

there is no such thing as a stupid question ... only stupid answers ..
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this post is the very definition of the latter.
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Strictly speaking, this internet fight™ started slightly earlier in the thread with somebody defending the "scrub of death" meme.
 
It would make more sense to be a stricter about a rule, if the Manual were up to date. It's also a bit difficult for the manual to be updated.

I also don't like a lot of what comes Linuxisms, but often, I use GNU or a specific Linux distribution documentation, especially Arch Linux, for applications. Linux and BSD are cousins. FreeBSD is efficient, while Linux generally isn't. A lot of GNU programs aren't efficient by nature, while FreeBSD lacks so many programs on its own, but ports gives that window go so many applications, that most Linux's don't have. The topic of Linux is unavoidable here, but I rather not see people saying they think it's so great, as this isn't a Linux forum, and that it's an inefficient OS bundle.

I would like to see a bot for message actions, that is signaled by moderators, or an admin account do a generic task of pointing out the rules.

There's another guideline about the stable version, rather than the current. Some are aware when they post about current, that they can post it, but may not get help. A bot would be perfect to remind everyone, so there doesn't have to be re-explaining by everyone. Then, there are some questions about current that shouldn't have to be asked, and should know the answer to, as in reading the manual. Something like a feature set in current, that can make its way into stable or a release, I see why can be asked. Asking a question about current, which the method hasn't changed in over 20 years, shouldn't be asked.
 
Uh, wow, so reading that thread, in case it wasn't clear: The "linux user" wanted people to not be scared of using ZFS (because of non-ECC horror stories) which might drive them to use ext4, not that he actually used that setup.

I don't think people who have comprehension problems need banhammers...
 
That's a justification, not a why.

The theme is, some can't get enough of Linux, but remind us on a FreeBSD forum.
 
Are people being... triggered... by the "L-word"? That's quite something.

Either way, it's not against the rules to mention it. Only to ask for help doing something on it.
 
This definitely looks like a troll thread to me, but alas... sometimes you just want to have fun ;)

You know what I dislike? Newbies who hardly have any experience with the forum they post on (69 messages at the time of writing is what I'd describe as a newbie) while they still believe they know what it takes to make things "better". Yah, try actively participating for over a year or something and then comment about stuff like that.

As to the RTFM part... I also think it's pathetic when people respond to newbies in an "RTFM" or "RTFM-like" fashion (you know: only a link to the manual (often not even the relevant part) or just a copy/paste of a manual section without even bothering to explain things a bit more). Nah, we'll just assume the poster didn't RTFM because they didn't mention it and thus we don't really add much useful ourselves.

Sure, obviously you don't want to waste time writing a small essay when most of your story can also be found in an existing manual. But there's still a fine difference between responding with "RTFM n00b" or actually taking the time and effort to explain the basics to them. Can be a brief explanation, sure, but at least you're trying to educate the masses.

A good forum, in my opinion obviously, picks the fine middle line.

PS... if you really dislike such posts you can always simply ignore them. Problem solved! No need to enforce anything. I'd rather go with live and let live and see newbie posts than having power hungry n00bs cluebies trying to tell people what's right and wrong.
 
msplsh said:
Are people being... triggered... by the "L-word"? That's quite something.
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Get over yourself.
You're giving a Linuxism more importance than it's worth.

I don't care if you like Linux so much. It's kind of annoying though, to keep expressing your love for it. While, you can be in a FreeBSD forum expressing your love for it, it begs the question, why aren't you expressing that in a Linux forum.

It's like saying, I like this car so much, but I'll buy that car instead, even though both cost about the same. But of course people come here, because they want something as efficient as FreeBSD to balance the bloat and junk that comes with most of Linux.

Bloatware that depends on something else to run more suitably, but then by design rebloats itself to the maximum is just backwards.
 
Hey, sidetone, are you still arguing about me or just with a strawman in your head? I'm here, because I answer desktop and gaming questions. I also advertise a few tools helping with the latter use case.
 
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