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Voltago
Advocate
Joined: 02 Sep 2003
Posts: 2584
Location: userland
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 Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 12:23 am Post subject: How to get no help whatsoever on the forums |
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To my great surprise and dismay, many people seem absolutely unable to get no support on these forums. Their threads receive lots of attention, some of the replies are even helpful! This has to stop. When you follow my little hints, you can rest assured that your call for help will be unheeded, unanswered and will quickly disappear in the depths of the forum databases, never to be seen again.
1) Preparation: None. Under no circumstances try to solve your problem yourself. I mean, after all you're using this crappy distribution some nerds wrote. Now it's causing trouble. Time for the nerds to repay your kindness and patience.
2) Topic: Choose a whiny, uninformative topic.
is good, but not compelling enough. Make it absolutely clear that your problem is more important than any other problem on this planet right now. So
| Code: | | 'I NEED HELP!!! THIS IS URGENT!!!1!' |
is far better.
3) Content: Here you have the choice between two successful stratagems:
Minimalistic approach: State your problem shortly, but be vague. Don't give all information (like hardware, software versions) away at once.
Information flooding approach: Print all log files you can find on your machine in your message and let your readers work out themselves what is wrong. Motivate them to do this by closing your message with 'What is wrong?'
4) Style: Be pathetic. Make everyone reading your message feel embarrassed on your behalf. Whine, call yourself names, throw in a few syntax errors for good measure.
Alternatively: Be angry. You have a problem, so you make it everyones problem. Insult Gentoo's devs and community. Threaten to stop using Gentoo if your problem isn't solved pretty quick.
5) After posting your message: Bump your thread early and often. Complain about lack of service.
Have I forgotten anything? |
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swooshOnLn
l33t
Joined: 28 Feb 2006
Posts: 741
Location: Charlotte, North Carolina
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 2:24 am Post subject: |
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yeah, you forgot the [/rant] tag, not to late to edit it in 
oh yeah, I almost forgot. Its good to have a 3rd party (usually grandma) type up your actual request for help. This is good to get that "out of the box" thinking and usually leads to quick and responsive posts.
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Earthwings
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7753
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:04 am Post subject: |
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Veni, vidi, vici.
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wah
Guru
Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 453
Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 11:49 am Post subject: |
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What a great How-To!! I am DEFINITELY going to try this later! 
Two edits -
(1) you forgot the common title "OMFG MY B0XEN ARE MELTING!!!!!!!!!!!!" and
(2) make sure that you recommend to forums posters to include the obligatory  either in their title or many times in their thread...it adds to the sympathy that won't be felt for them
LOFL, and cheers on a great post.
Take care,
W.
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Last edited by wah on Fri Nov 17, 2006 1:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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batistuta
Veteran
Joined: 29 Jul 2005
Posts: 1384
Location: Aachen
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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great fun post 
you've forgotten:
- after people manage to go decipher what your problem is and solve it, never mark as [solved]. No one cares if you managed or not to solve your problem, and you shouldn't tell anyone whether their suggestions and time invested was worth it.
- When someone suggests you try a command or something, don't even think about trying that. It most probably opens a back door for Gentoo admins to take control of your system and use it for the search and database processing power required by the Gentoo forums. Better instead, keep bitching that your Gentoo doesn't work.
- With installation problems, don't read the installation handbook. It's too long and badly written. Rather boot the liveCD, type "Gentoo walk" and then just post the error messages. Or better yet, just simply say it doesn't start Outlook automatically.
- if someone puts links to pages that answer your problem, don't ever click there. It opens pop-up windows with irrelevant information. Better keep asking until someone writes the answer directly in the thread
that's all I can think of right now... |
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Zubzub
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 91
Location: ::1
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PaulBredbury
Watchman
Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 7310
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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A posting which will get no meaningful responses, and is guaranteed to contain no useful debugging information, inevitably ends with this immortal phrase:
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Brainfart
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 123
Location: Redmond, WA, USA
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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| PaulBredbury wrote: | A posting which will get no meaningful responses, and is guaranteed to contain no useful debugging information, inevitably ends with this immortal phrase:
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I'd hope that the converse is not true...  |
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truc
Advocate
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 3199
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| Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:09 pm Post subject: |
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| batistuta wrote: | - When someone suggests you try a command or something, don't even think about trying that. It most probably opens a back door for Gentoo admins to take control of your system and use it for the search and database processing power required by the Gentoo forums. Better instead, keep bitching that your Gentoo doesn't work.
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And because of those not trying the command, we can't have a decent forum search 
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trae
n00b
Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 54
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:04 pm Post subject: Re: How to get no help whatsoever on the forums |
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Hello, Voltago!
This is an excellent tutorial, but there's one point I'd like everyone to consider very seriously.
| Voltago wrote: | 3) Content: Here you have the choice between two successful stratagems:
Minimalistic approach: State your problem shortly, but be vague. Don't give all information (like hardware, software versions) away at once.
Information flooding approach: Print all log files you can find on your machine in your message and let your readers work out themselves what is wrong. Motivate them to do this by closing your message with 'What is wrong?' |
Privacy is extremely important these days. In discussion forums you can never know whom you are talking to. Men are men, women are men and little girls are FBI agents. There are bots that collect personal data. The NSA is watching. I strongly suggest that everyone uses the minimalistic approach!
A few methods you can use to further protect your privacy:
- Avoid giving any factual information. For example, in case of broken packages, it's usually enough to give a vague description, like "the image viewer package is failing!!!!". And just as it is with admins and passwords, a developer doesn't need to know the version of the program you're using. It's the developer's job to make sure the program works, not yours.
- Be extremely careful when anyone asks for further information. Usually theyre just trying to pry for personal information, they're not interested in your problems. When a developer asks for the exact name or version of the package, it best to reply with "huh, why do you wanna know???" or "I told you, you idiot, it's the image viewer!!1"
- Mix fact with fiction. Often a very effective way to protect your privacy is to provide a lot of false information with just a small number of facts. You could, for example, to claim that you're using sparc instead of x86 and that the version is 2.0.11 instead of 2.5.4-r1. Sometimes it's even better to say that the failing package is kdeartwork-kwin-styles instead of colordiff. If the problem arises during compilation, it doesn't really matter which package it is anyway, since it isn't even compiled yet!
- Claim that you're only asking for a friend or a relative. A simple method that's often overlooked. "My friends g3nt00 sux. Plz help!!1!"
And last but not least, a general advice on the subject: Don't forget, that it is your right to have a fully working Gentoo system. You don't have to humiliate yourself and be apologetic when demanding for help, after all everything should work in the first place, and it is your time that is being wasted here. |
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Mousee
Apprentice
Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 291
Location: Illinois, USA
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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You missed out on the best one...
Apply the minimalist approach and post your question in someone else's thread (preferably a very old thread).
Lovin' this guide otherwise |
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Unlucky_Alf
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
Posts: 92
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| Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 6:50 am Post subject: |
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| batistuta wrote: | | after people manage to go decipher what your problem is and solve it, never mark as [solved]. No one cares if you managed or not to solve your problem, and you shouldn't tell anyone whether their suggestions and time invested was worth it. |
IMO this needs some further development. Delete all your postings in that thread, so that no one can ever figure out what your problem was and how it was solved. It is also very good practice to change the topic to something like "Problem solved". Imagine hundreds of threads that all have the same topic, it would make the forums look sooo c0000L!!1! |
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nixnut
Bodhisattva
Joined: 09 Apr 2004
Posts: 10974
Location: the dutch mountains
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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Moved from Documentation, Tips & Tricks to Off the Wall.
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Please add [solved] to the initial post's subject line if you feel your problem is resolved. Help answer the unanswered
talk is cheap. supply exceeds demand |
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mdeininger
Veteran
Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 1740
Location: Emerald Isles, observing Dublin's docklands
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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gee, was my answer about imap/ldap and the note about this forum technically not being related to windows thaaaaat bad a thing to say?
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Earthwings
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7753
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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| mdeininger wrote: |
gee, was my answer about imap/ldap and the note about this forum technically not being related to windows thaaaaat bad a thing to say? |
Hey, the link points to the post below yours
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Tolstoi
l33t
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 677
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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Had a real good laugh at those ones |
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mdeininger
Veteran
Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 1740
Location: Emerald Isles, observing Dublin's docklands
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Earthwings wrote: | | mdeininger wrote: |
gee, was my answer about imap/ldap and the note about this forum technically not being related to windows thaaaaat bad a thing to say? |
Hey, the link points to the post below yours |
pheeeeeeew
well, somehow this ol' browser of mine tends to mess up anchors
but the OP certainly is right, and i find myself being pretty stupid when asking questions... 
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playfool
l33t
Joined: 01 Jun 2004
Posts: 688
Location: Ã
rhus, Denmark
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Remember it's always helpful to mention that "it's works in Ubuntu fuckheads" |
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Earthwings
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7753
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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| playfool wrote: | | Remember it's always helpful to mention that "it's works in Ubuntu fuckheads" |
Why not? 
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bosko
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Mar 2003
Posts: 114
Location: The Netherlands
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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| batistuta wrote: | | - When someone suggests you try a command or something, don't even think about trying that. It most probably opens a back door for Gentoo admins to take control of your system and use it for the search and database processing power required by the Gentoo forums. |
You should be more specific, so people know exactly which commands to avoid AT ALL COST. Some dangerious commands are:
Dmesg: a famous trojan horse backdoor program. It not only opens a backdoor to your computer, but also outputs all your private information in encrypted form. The output will look as harmless gibberish to you, but the Gentoo admins can extract personal information from it, such as your address, phone number, creditcard number, shoesize and full name. Never post this output on a forum.
Cat: a possibly even more dangerous malicious program. Cat outputs the content of a file and then deletes it. NEVER run cat on important system file, such as /etc/X11/xorg.conf, as this will cause your system to stop functioning properly.
Lsmod: a mysterious virus. The lsmod virus has not yet been reverse engineered by scientists, so it is still unknown what it exactly does. For now the best thing is to simply avoid running this command. Scientists suspect this program may somehow destroy your hardware.
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sugar
Guru
Joined: 07 Aug 2004
Posts: 579
Location: Morrinsville, New Zealand
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Off the Wall
