Andy
rants about people who expect opensource project to fix their
problems, read their minds, balance their books, etc. (Anthony
discusses this too.) IMO this is one of the more interesting
aspects of the culture: how does a project make newbies feel like they
can understand it enough to try and fix it themselves?
There are an awful lot of factors going into how people react when
they encounter a problem. Here are a few off the top of my head, all
IMO of course:
- If the user is a lazy bastard there's really nothing the project
can do. Projects that assume a certain level of expertise (more
fundamental plumbing) don't have as much of a problem with this while
projects that market themselves as "foo for the masses" have more
instances. These people are the most frustrating but we shouldn't take
it personally and only spend the bare minimum of time on them.
- If a user believes there's deep magic going on behind the scenes
he's more likely to throw up his hands and ask for help at the
earliest opportunity. Note that believes is the operative word
here -- the code and design can be fairly straightforward but if it's
accomplishing something hairy or the docs aren't there the user won't
know.
- If a user can find a FAQ and history of other people asking for
help she's likely to look there first. After all, people who aren't
lazy bastards don't want to look like lazy bastards. What's important
for these folks is keeping the FAQ up-to-date, ensuring that all
correspondence takes place (or is copied) to the '-help' mailing list
and that the mailing list is searchable, even if it's via google.
- If a user asks a question and gets attitude back -- "Who are you
to question how this is done?" -- or finds a pattern of such a
response in the history is less likely to put forth the effort in
solving her own problem. Why bother if you're only going to get
flamed?
- If the user can get the project up and running quickly then he's
more likely put forth the effort in solving the problem. This is all
about perceived reward -- why bother spending the time if you don't
know if the solution will actually get you anything? (I also wrote
about this on
Perlmonks.)
I think one of the many reasons that Struts has done so well is
that the user mailing list is very friendly to newbies. The frontline
support folks won't suffer people who are lazy bastards, but people
who present their problem, show that they've looked in the history and
earnestly try to solve it themselves get tons of help. I try to do the
same thing with OpenInteract and SPOPS, but it's a much easier task
since the userbase is smaller :-)