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Manichean · 01-24-2011, 10:18 AM

First off, this is nothing aimed at someone in particular, just a general assumption.
My feeling looking at many of the responses around here is that people expect a kind of hand-holding, full-service support desk. You have to remember that not only do the developers create Calibre in their free time voluntarily, but the same goes for the forum regulars voluntarily helping others in their free time. We get basically the same questions over and over and over, with maybe a few thrown in that are genuinely interesting. That is actually one reason I started creating the regex tutorial- so that we could just point people asking about regexes to said tutorial and tell 'em to come back if they still have questions after reading it.

You also have to understand that at least a few of us, as far as the mindset goes, come from the geek/hacker culture. We enjoy solving problems, but only interesting ones- the ones asking about things that are already solved get pointed to the canned solutions.
Also, we only can work on a problem if a user provides details. Often times, one really has to pry and nag before one has all the info needed to solve the problem. Other times, maybe you point people at one of the tutorials only to get the response that they'd already read it- maybe a general guideline as to how to ask for help, specifically what to include in a request, would be a Good Thing to have.
I've actually recently had the situation where I asked a few people having problems with the regex tutorial and I asked them what should be improved, only to get answers that boiled down to "dunno it's just too complicated lol" (I'm exaggerating here, but still...). You have to realize that the process of using things like the regex options or similar stuff is actualy aimed at what I'll just call "power users" for the sake of convenience. There's a limit to how far you can simplify an explanation on a technical matter. If you're not willing to invest the energy to understand that explanation or for whatever reason unable to understand it, maybe it just isn't for you yet. The Calibre manual cannot and should not be a manual to get from zero computer knowledge to knowing Python and regexes and all kinds of funky stuff- it is about how to use Calibre, and if you want to to some of the more advanced stuff, you should be willing to look for other information if you're missing some background you'd need.

01-24-2011, 10:18 AM	#11
Manichean Wizard Posts: 3,130 Karma: 91256 Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Germany Device: Cybook Gen3	First off, this is nothing aimed at someone in particular, just a general assumption. My feeling looking at many of the responses around here is that people expect a kind of hand-holding, full-service support desk. You have to remember that not only do the developers create Calibre in their free time voluntarily, but the same goes for the forum regulars voluntarily helping others in their free time. We get basically the same questions over and over and over, with maybe a few thrown in that are genuinely interesting. That is actually one reason I started creating the regex tutorial- so that we could just point people asking about regexes to said tutorial and tell 'em to come back if they still have questions after reading it. You also have to understand that at least a few of us, as far as the mindset goes, come from the geek/hacker culture. We enjoy solving problems, but only interesting ones- the ones asking about things that are already solved get pointed to the canned solutions. Also, we only can work on a problem if a user provides details. Often times, one really has to pry and nag before one has all the info needed to solve the problem. Other times, maybe you point people at one of the tutorials only to get the response that they'd already read it- maybe a general guideline as to how to ask for help, specifically what to include in a request, would be a Good Thing to have. I've actually recently had the situation where I asked a few people having problems with the regex tutorial and I asked them what should be improved, only to get answers that boiled down to "dunno it's just too complicated lol" (I'm exaggerating here, but still...). You have to realize that the process of using things like the regex options or similar stuff is actualy aimed at what I'll just call "power users" for the sake of convenience. There's a limit to how far you can simplify an explanation on a technical matter. If you're not willing to invest the energy to understand that explanation or for whatever reason unable to understand it, maybe it just isn't for you yet. The Calibre manual cannot and should not be a manual to get from zero computer knowledge to knowing Python and regexes and all kinds of funky stuff- it is about how to use Calibre, and if you want to to some of the more advanced stuff, you should be willing to look for other information if you're missing some background you'd need.