[texhax] steady decline in tug membership ?

[bruce at auswildlife.com]

Hi Reinhard,

yes, those are very good points and well taken. I have certainly been able
to answer most of my own questions from the documentation and I also found
some answers to other questions by reading many of the threads here. So
it's probably not true to say that I have received no benefits. I was
probably more annoyed by the phrasing of some of the responses that I got,
but once again, I'm sure noone meant any offence or harm.

With some more experience, I might be able to start helping others as well.

cheers, Bruce



> bruce at auswildlife.com writes:
>
>  > I posted two questions to the group and the first response was ..."OMG,
>  > does he know what he is doing?' [...]
>
> Hi Bruce, this is indeed very unpolite and inappropriate.  Things like
> this shouldn't happen.  On the other hand, this is quite untypical for
> this list.  There are many people who invest an enormous amount of
> their spare time in order to help others.
>
>  > So in fact the value of membership to the group has been zero so far.
>
> The membership fee is not spent for answering your questions.  Nobody
> who helps other users gets money from TUG.
>
>  > [...] it would be good if many of the senior/advanced members were
>  > to bear this im mind and make the effort to help basic users
>
> They actually do.
>
>  > (telling someone to refer to a manual is not really providing any
>  > help and such a response is not worth posting - is it??!!!).
>
> In most cases people are not aware that there is documentation at all
> or don't know where to search for it.  In many cases it is sufficient
> to point people to the documentation.
>
> What you can't expect is that someone reads documentation for you and
> explains things which are explained already.  If something is unclear,
> you are welcome to ask here, but you have to explain in detail what
> exactly in the documentation is unclear.
>
> Please don't forget that people on this mailing list already spend a
> lot of time answering other people's questions.  They do not only
> answer, they try to reproduce problems on their machines, they develop
> code if necessary, they read documentation, they read documentation,
> they read documentation, they read documentation...
>
> Bruce, what do you expect?  Pointing people to the documentation had
> always been a good idea and most people had been happy because TeX
> related documentation is quite good.  They simply didn't know
> what/where to search for.  Don't expect that someone does something
> for you what you can do yourself.
>
> Never forget that nobody is paid for providing help.
>
> Regards,
>   Reinhard
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover	                      mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is
> NO.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>