Reading comprehension in the open source community

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Colonel Panic
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Reading comprehension in the open source community

#1 Post by Colonel Panic »

A good article from Dedoimedo which IMO makes some valuable and necessary points.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linu ... nsion.html
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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

I do agree, absolutely.

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rcrsn51
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#3 Post by rcrsn51 »

It makes me wonder if these kind of people ever bother reading anything at all, or if they are firing semi-coherent responses just because a title of a post or something along those lines caught their attention. And rage.
This happens in Puppy forum threads all the time. People see the title but cannot be bothered to read the full discussion. So they post a comment that is redundant or irrelevant to the issue.

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Semme
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#4 Post by Semme »

Correct-O-mundo! ALL THE TIME..
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

starhawk
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#5 Post by starhawk »

Spot-on article. I'm guilty of not reading a full thread a lot of the time -- far more than I'd like, TBH.

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Flash
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#6 Post by Flash »

I have to admit that wading through a long thread to find the few posts that actually contributed to the solution, or shed some light on the problem, or at least contributed to the sum of human knowledge, is a daunting task. Many times it requires a knowledge of the subject which a beginner is not likely to have.

gcmartin

#7 Post by gcmartin »

+1 as I think many/most are like this across the forum.

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#8 Post by musher0 »

Quite true. Somebody had to bring it up in the open.
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#9 Post by bark_bark_bark »

Amazing article, too bad most still won't actually read it. Probably they'll just read "opensuse" and "mp3 issues", and then just react to it.
....

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#10 Post by musher0 »

Hello all.

Is this particular to Linux forums?
In the world at large -- from any race, gender or country:

1) Some people are superficial by choice

2) Bird-brained people can't be anything but superficial (THEY can be forgiven)

2) Disorganized people couldn't care less about good methodology

3) Rough 'n tough people don't give a d..n about other people's feelings

4) Sensitive people react emotionally to any subject: they become postal,
__ depressive, romantic, drunk, stoned, distracted, what have you, for any reason

5) Psychologically threatened types use put-downs anytime anywhere, in discussion
__ threads as well as in conversations with "friends" or family; they haven't learned
__ and / or don't know any better

6) Some people combine some or all of the above features.

I'm sure I missed a few features, too.

Nothing to encourage "reading comprehension", I'm afraid.

Welcome to Humanity, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Humanity.

My 2¢. BFN.
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mavrothal
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#11 Post by mavrothal »

Flash wrote:wading through a long thread to find the few posts that actually contributed to the solution, or shed some light on the problem, or at least contributed to the sum of human knowledge, is a daunting task.
because
rcrsn51 wrote:People see the title but cannot be bothered to read the full discussion. So they post a comment that is redundant or irrelevant to the issue.
and
gcmartin wrote:many/most are like this across the forum
so
musher0 wrote:Welcome to Humanity, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Humanity

:roll:
== [url=http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]Here is how to solve your[/url] [url=https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html]Linux problems fast[/url] ==

mostly_lurking
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#12 Post by mostly_lurking »

Before I reply to someone's thread, I ask myself: Have I understood what the problem is? Am I able to post something that may contribute to finding a solution? (That's why I don't post much... I'm not too tech-savvy, so the areas in which I can help others are rather limited.)
Surely I'm not the only one here who reads before they drop a comment.
musher0 wrote:Is this particular to Linux forums?
Certainly not. I guess it happens everywhere, especially if it's about a topic that people have strong opinions about, like... someone's choice of software :roll:. They don't care for the details, they just glance over the topic and fire off their standard response.
However, it seems that Linux users often tend to be especially prone to feeling smart and superior because of the system's reputation as an OS for geeks. And anyone who has trouble with it isn't worthy of using it. ("You can't even get an mp3 to play on Linux? Haha, you noob, go back to Windows!")

The blog post by Dedoimedo makes a good point about commenters blaming the reviewer for the difficulties that he had, rather than acknowledging the obvious flaws in the product he reviewed, and that this behavior can cause the software (or Linux in general) to remain flawed - if nobody admits the problem, nobody will fix it.

Btw, musher - great list :)

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#13 Post by Flash »

It would be helpful if a search for the posts made by one person could be limited to one thread. There is no obvious way to do that with the forum search. Is there a search engine that will search a single thread? That might make it easier to rummage through a long thread.

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#14 Post by musher0 »

Flash wrote:It would be helpful if a search for the posts made by one person could be limited to one thread. There is no obvious way to do that with the forum search. Is there a search engine that will search a single thread? That might make it easier to rummage through a long thread.
Hello Flash and all.

A search engine may not always be necessary, I think. If the thread is long, the
initiator could edit his first post to add an index or table of contents for sub-topics /
ramifications. This index could be referenced with proper URLs to the posts in the
thread, and a few words (less than a line) could provide a short explanation for each
sub-topic.

I tried to do that here. There is a "table" more or less in the middle of the post.
(Forum member "ASRI" suggested the idea, actually.)

It's more work for the initial poster, of course, but it's worth it since it helps the
readers focus.

Back to Flash's question, I know that you can narrow down a search on a theme to
a particular site with any search engine -- if you type, for example:
This should offer all threads, even posts, in the forum where "RAM" is mentioned.

For only one thread, I don't know. Do the threads here have their own number, like
the posts have? If so, we could possibly search only one thread in the forum using
the technique above, if we knew the thread number. We could type:
SUBJECT http://murga-linux.com/puppy/< thread number >
Has anybody tried searching with:
SUBJECT http://murga-linux.com/puppy/< forum member >
Does it work? (I just tried it in ask.com and startpage.com and the answer is "no"
-- for those two engines anyway.)

Of course, once you have found the thread, you can search it with your browser's
Cntrl-F (search) function. It's page by page, though.

As a last resort, like slavvo67 suggested in the Woof-CE thread, you could download
the whole forum and grep it! :D (NOT!)

BFN.
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#15 Post by moeppyfan »

bark_bark_bark wrote:Amazing article, too bad most still won't actually read it. Probably they'll just read "opensuse" and "mp3 issues", and then just react to it.
I'm not sure if we're reading the same article. To me, it is scatterbrained beyond belief (lacks focus and going off on 20 random tangents that have nothing to do with anything) and a complete whinefest, by someone who is obviously an egomaniac desperate for attention and he has no problems insulting everyone he meets who are just showing interest in helping him (for free). Clearly after all these times when he has failed to get the answers he wanted, the author should realize the maybe the problem is with him and his god-awful writing style. His narcisism and unrealistic sense of self-worth is also apparent in the title:
Dedoimedo
A place to learn a lot about a lot!
Sadly, I think he falls into all 6 categories mentioned by musher0 here. I knew the article would be stupid from the generalizations in the title (ie. implying closed-source advocates know how to read better) but it was way worse than I thought. I am glad "Dedoimedo" never joined the Puppy Forum, and it's a good thing his articles don't have a comments section. :lol:

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#16 Post by Moat »

mostly_lurking wrote:However, it seems that Linux users often tend to be especially prone to feeling smart and superior because of the system's reputation as an OS for geeks...

...The blog post by Dedoimedo makes a good point about commenters blaming the reviewer for the difficulties that he had, rather than acknowledging the obvious flaws in the product he reviewed, and that this behavior can cause the software (or Linux in general) to remain flawed - if nobody admits the problem, nobody will fix it.
This pretty much nails it. The "Linux geek ego" phenomena is ultimately damaging to Linux in general, hindering progress. And from what I've gathered, perusing Linux-related forums/blogs over the last few years, it's surprisingly prevalent.

Bob

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#17 Post by musher0 »

Unfortunate, but true...
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#18 Post by Colonel Panic »

II agree with what';s been said so far but also, the point Dedo's making, particularly in the first paragraph of his article, "The reason why we gathered here," is worth repeating. He was saying that the task for which he was asking for help - getting media to play on his computer - was almost impossibly hard to pull off and required knowledge an ordinary Linux user simply couldn't be expected to have (such as what Packman is and what it does).
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#19 Post by Flash »

That's what forums like this one are for. :D

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#20 Post by Colonel Panic »

Flash wrote:That's what forums like this one are for. :D
True enough Flash, but I agree with Dedo that no distro should be as hard to use as the example he gave (playing multimedia in OpenSUSE)and Puppy certainly isn't.

And what happens if you can't get networking to work, as I couldn't in the latest Slackware last week, and therefore can't access the forums?

BTW, if you want to use OpenSUSE and don't want to struggle with all the codecs, a good solution is to use the Education edition, Edu-Life. It's a big download (3 GB+) and takes up more than 11 GB on the hard drive when installed, but it comes with everything already included.

The series 13 versions also allowed you to log in as root; I don't know if you still can.
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