Nick Jenkins wrote:
This is the most unprofessional and community hostile notice I have ever seen - if I read this right is says:
"...eat our stuff, bugs and all, and you are on your own if you need help, we don't care..."
:-)
Many project websites link to this document in their sections on how to get help. That's fine, it's the use we intended — but if you are a webmaster creating such a link for your project page, please display prominently near the link notice that /we are not a help desk for your project!/
We have learned the hard way that without such a notice, we will repeatedly be pestered by idiots who think having published this document makes it our job to solve all the world's technical problems.
If you're reading this document because you need help, and you walk away with the impression you can get it directly from the authors, /you/ are one of the idiots in question. Don't ask /us/ questions. We'll just ignore you. We are here to show you how to get help from people who actually know about the software or hardware you're dealing with, but 99% of the time that will not be us. Unless you know for /certain/ that one of the authors is an expert on what you're dealing with, leave us alone and everybody will be happier.
That's from the http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#disclaimer page; In other words, the people who wrote how to ask better technical questions are simply saying "don't then proceed to ask us (the how-to-ask-questions-people) those technical questions; rather, ask it of the appropriate mailing list (or whatever) for the software in question". Which is what you've done ;-) I.e. It's not the MediaWiki people refusing to help you.
All the best, Nick.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
OK. We should not be referring to our community members as "idiots". This is way out of line. The general tone raises some hairs on the back of my neck, but when it got to the term "idiot" I think this creates needless friction. I certainly understand why the developers would not want to deal with trivial issues and I agree with this. I also understand this was an off list posting, but Brion did refer to it as reference.
Jeff