Re: [tlug] Lunatic Lynch-mob of Linux Losers

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 01:36:10PM +0900, Curt Sampson wrote:
> On Sat, 5 May 2007, Jedidiah Israel wrote:
> 
> >However, the guru is in a totally rotten mood--remember, he's a
> >horrible person. He takes offense and decides to leave the list. You
> >might be thinking, good riddance, and anyone who read the exchange can
> >tell that I'm a much better person than he is--he made himself look
> >bad.
> >
> >WRONG!!! You just deprived the list of one of its best resources.
> 
> I'm not sure I'd agree with this. General niceness, in my opinion,
> tends to be grossly under-rated in many on-line groups, and lack of it
> does drive people underground or away. 

The article was written back when some well meaning new comers had
driven the most knowledgeable people off list.   Looking at it now,
I'm going to keep that part in, because I would still rather have 
the knowledge than the niceness, if I could only have one or the other. 
  

Like you, I prefer both.  Quite seriously, I think tlug and others have
become far more newcomer friendly than they used to be.  There are
questions I see posted here, that receive answers, that a few years ago
would have simply gotten RTFM answers.

TLUG, like other lists, has had to make various adjustments to the huge
influx of people who have switched to Linux simply to avoid MS.  

When I first wrote my article on Japanese in Linux, it was far more
complex.  Nowadays it's usually {pacman|apt-get|yum|emerge}
(command_to_install) scim-anthy.  

(That holds for you NetBSD-ers too, now, the scim-anthy in WIP works
perfectly, though for Net I still have instructions for kinput and the
uim included with pkgsource.)


If the list becoming a nicer
> place attracts people to post because they will no longer get flamed to
> a crisp, it could well be that such a list will now be giving better
> technical information than it was before, even if there's no one person
> who is as much of an expert as the guy who left.

The only trouble with this is that it's a gamble--it might be the case
or it might wind up being a place where there is no good advice.  I can
think of examples of it working and examples of it being the latter,
where silly questions get asked and receive only silly answers.  

I reiterate, there are far fewer flames on tlug these days.  (Hrrm, it
seems to be connected with Jonathan becoming a dad, but ...)  :)

(Don't plonk me Jonathan--you're still one of the scariest on the list,
OK?)


-- 

Scott Robbins

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