I think we're looking at two separate problems here.
First, we've got the people who want to find answers, and are struggling with the documentation, the forums, etc. You'll find some of them posting in this thread, and some of them standing around the forum with glassy eyes and confused expressions. They want to find answers, but either they don't understand where to look, or the answers don't match up to their skill level.
Then, we've got the ones accurately described as entitled. Trolls aside, they certainly exist. I'll admit to a certain level of hostility toward these people because they
are entitled and seemingly proud of it. I have a lot of respect for the calibre developers, and have had since the first day I used it. These people show no respect, and instead flounce in here expecting everyone to kowtow to them and run to do as they demand. I don't like people who show contempt where I show respect, especially when that contempt is the result of the world not working exactly the way they, as little princesses, want it to. I'm not nearly as polite to them as I am to someone who asks a legitimate question, and I don't think anyone should be expected to be. When someone does a great deal of work for your benefit, the correct answer is gratitude, not contempt, and civilized people know that. Uncivilized people need not be treated as though they're civilized; it's unfair to the civilized ones, and will make no impression on the uncivilized ones, as it's only what they expect anyway.
A lot of good ideas have been proposed here. I particularly agree with doing something with the FAQ thread, which just plain scares me. We need a clear collection of questions and answers -- and, because the answer to a question about calibre may not be the same today as it was a month ago, that collection needs to be regularly updated to replace old answers when they change (which, with the rate of development going on, they almost certainly will). That does mean we need a thread keeper for that one, and it's an effort-consuming job. We also need to compile a list of questions that such a thread could answer. This is where some of the newer users could be invaluable if they can come up with lists of all the "How do I...?" questions they needed to know when they first started.
One part of the problem is that calibre can do so many things, and its users use it for so many things, that no one person's questions, let alone answers, are sufficient. Some people use it to organize their ebooks. Some use it strictly for conversion. Some mostly need the content server. Some just use it to connect to their e-reader. Some use it for multiple functions, but I doubt that anyone, even Kovid, uses
everything calibre can do, because it's gotten to where it can do so many things. So we're going to need multiple people, with multiple approaches, contributing questions and answers.
Another thing we should post, and it should also probably be both stickied and locked, is an explanation of how to ask a question.
Yes, you'd think that would be obvious, but apparently it isn't. You'd think that people would look at other questions and their answers, and post in ways likely to get results, but they don't. As a random example, over in the "promote your book" section, where book announcements generally provide the title of the book, sometimes the genre, maybe the available formats, DRM status, etc., one person posted such an announcement entitled "Hey!" I doubt if that sold a lot of books. We've seen plenty of them here in the calibre forum: they post with a title like "Help me!" (sometimes with far to many exclamation points) and a post that gives next to no information, and it's like pulling teeth to find out what their actual problem is. Some of them, yes, are the entitled jerks who think that we should all roll over and cater to them, not to mention divine their exact needs without them taking the time to tell us, but some of them are just utterly clueless.
Microsoft and
Eric Raymond have both written excellent explanations of how to ask an effective question. We might wish to write our own version specific to calibre, as one is rather MS-oriented and the other is long enough to need its
own FAQ, but I think they'd be good places to start. (since I'm one of the primary complainers here, if we decide this needs to be done, I'll volunteer to write up how to ask better questions)
We should also divide our question and answer collection into categories, such as "getting it running", "using the server", etc. That will help people find their particular answers, and their particular
level of answers. We need to have some basic information that would work for my mother as well as answers that would be necessary to people at much higher skill levels.
And this is starting to ramble and get out of hand ... down, you in the back snickering "starting???" ... so I'll end here.
