On 2018-09-16 11:59, Mike Hughes wrote:
Michael,
Condescending and belittling treatment of others in this list is not
the norm. Your personal attacks are unwarranted and unhelpful.
I certainly didn't mean anything that way, and let me apologize should
anybody have taken anything that way. My general comments and generic
example were meant to be taken as that, and not a commentary on the OP.
Since you reached out and asked for help in relating to others I will
share with you this piece from Dr. Phil Agre which helped me immensely
when I was learning the ropes at the helpdesk and I still refer to it
regularly to help keep me on track:
I appreciate the reference (and am familiar with it) and anybody who has
spent time doing general tech support knows that a lot of finding the
right level of help involves properly gauging the level of expertise,
which is not always a simple task, especially on this list: we've had
people ask for help who have needed basic background on what a web
server is, and people who have been mortally insulted by any suggestion
that they are not foremost experts in Linux, perl, and the field of
backup software. Sometimes, these are the same people.
I've gotten it wrong quite a bit. I've written long passages on how to
diagnose a [presumably] complex problem only to find the questioner
simply didn't know how to invoke an executable that wasn't in the path,
and I've inquired about simple, in-the-manual, obvious steps and it
became clear later that the questioner was well into debugging a tough
corner case. With this group in particular, some questioners only need
a tiny nudge, and some need handholding through the most basic
operations, and some uncover weird corner cases that need addressing.
Hopefully I get it right more often than not, but it's something I can
always improve upon.
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