mike155 Report Discussion

[mike155]

User: ManfredB
Reason: User abuses the Gentoo forums and the helpfulness of the German Gentoo Linux community.


1) User abuses the Gentoo forums.

ManfredB starts threads in the German discussion subforum in which he is mostly the only one talking. He misuses the forums as his personal blog:

• https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1135053.html
  
• https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1146227.html
  

I do not think that anyone except himself wants to read those threads.

He was kindly asked to stop (see: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8724032.html#8724032).

He said okay. After that, he just started the next thread, in which he whines and complains that Gentoo doesn't work on his new notebook: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1152545.html


2) User misuses helpfulness of the German Gentoo Linux community.

ManfredB came to the forums in 2019. He was warmly welcomed and all of his questions were answered friendly and in detail.

After a while, it turned out that ManfredB uses Gentoo Linux like a video a game. He installs it over and over again. Every time he installs Gentoo, new problems come up and he asks questions. It doesn't help to answer his questions, because it just leads to another thread and more questions.

After a while, he even switched to unstable/testing. The result were more problems, more threads and more questions. At first, we answered his questions. Then, we pointed him to documentation, which he didn't read. We told him that Gentoo is an operating system. That you install Gentoo Linux only once. We told him that unstable is for more experienced users. We told him and that Gentoo Linux users - especially if they are on unstable/testing - should read documentation and try to solve problems on their own. That's what our handbook says. See: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:X86/Portage/Branches.

ManfredB didn't listen - he ignored everything we told him. He just continued to create new threads and to ask new questions.

Of course, it's fine to ask questions. But there is an implicit social contract: The person asking a question

1. should think at least 10 minutes before asking a question
   
2. should read documentation and should try to solve the problem by himself
   
3. should listen to the people offering help
   
4. should try to learn something and to acquire knowledge
   

ManfredB violates those rules. I think he misuses the helpfulness of the Linux Gentoo forum members.


3) User sows discord.

I'm annoyed by ManfredB's posts and I think that his posts cause trouble in the German forums community. The allegations against our German-speaking moderator (see above) are partly the result of ManfredB's misbehavior.

I also think that ManfredB's posts distract new users. If we, as the Gentoo community, want to survive, we must attract new users. Gentoo is a distribution for the more experienced users - and we can attract those users with interesting discussions. We won't attract new users with threads in which a user whines and complains that Gentoo doesn't work on his notebook.

He should be stopped!

[pietinger]

My thoughts about Mike's complaint:

@mike155 is a very experienced Gentoo user, very helpful to other users and all he wrote about @ManfredB is true.

It is also true that some users told @ManfredB to use another distro. One of them did this in a way I didnt like (as person and as moderator) ...

It is also true that there are some users which helped - and still helps - @ManfredB. One of them is @Josef.95. Also a very experienced and very helpful Gentoo user (since 2007 here in forum). Actual example from today: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8726033.html#8726033

In the past I wrote (as mod) all users which grumbled against @ManfredB: "There is no duty to answer a post; but if you do, it should be kind and friendly".

On the other way I would never think about telling some people NOT to answer/help someone (especially old users who knows each other). My thinking is: As long as there are users helping each other I (as mod) have no reason for an intervention.

Another story are two threads which are mostly a personal BLOG:

Yes, a forum is not the place for a personal BLOG and maybe the moderator team should tell this @Manfred in a more direct way; it is also possible to move these into our moderator forum. This should be stopped. (It should be noted also that the two blog articles are in "german discussion" and not in "german support forum".)

My thinking about other users is, I (as person and mod) have no reason to ask what someone is doing with Gentoo. If someone has the hobby to install it (maybe he wants to learn more about these install routines) I dont care. I learned by Gentoo: Its all about choices.

Maybe I am too indulgent, but I will not request a ban for an 82-years old user and I think: If @ManfredB will get no more help he will stop also to ask, but as long he gets help, new users will see: "Oh an unexerienced user gets help" ... Here I have an opposite view of how this could cause troubles. Maybe I am wrong here ... and maybe I am not competent enough as moderator. The team will decide it.


P.S.: And yes, I dont know @ManfredB in person or have any relationship with him; I only know his posts in our forum.

[NeddySeagoon]

mike155,

In my experience, as a mod here since May 2006 I've known three instances like you describe in the English forums.
Two of the problem users stopped posting altogether after a PM pointing out that the forum was not a blog and that if they continued, more direct action would be taken.

The third ignored the warning, and other warnings, and was banned.

I don't have any language skills, so I cannot read the posts you have linked. Machine translation makes a mess of the nuances of language, so is not much help here.

Going by my experience, we start with a nice friendly PM saying please don't blog.
If the PM is never read, admins can see the registered email address on the account and write to that.
If that does not have the desired outcome, the blog threads can be locked, with a mod post explaining that the forums are not a blog.
Now its public, others are likely to express an opinion too.
As a last resort, the user can be banned.

That's all deliberately generic since I can't read the posts.
Well, I put the first 5000 characters through Google translate, so i have an idea of the direction they are going in. It appeared to be a commentary.

We have had over the years, many 'help vampires'. They don't read/follow links they are given. They keep reinstalling.
Eventually the community stops responding and they stop posting.
That's every helpers individual choice.
That sort of behaviour is much harder to moderate but taking action against the blogging may help here too.

Moderation activities are best done outside of the public gaze. Its human nature to react badly to being asked to not do something.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Chiitoo]

Split this here so that it doesn't clutter the reports topic, and is easier to keep track of.

Apologies for the delay on doing anything about this. I do hope I can put more time into this sooner rather than later!

Thanks!

Edit 2023-05-24:

It seems I never got to investing as much time to this as I would have liked, and did not manage to post a proper reply, but since this topic came up again in kde-plasma/plasma-meta scheitert an media-libs/libsld2, I'll quote my post (8790571) there.