I'm sorry you feel that way. Experience teaches us that people do speak up more than they tend to keep schtum. We do get feedback on most things, including the "NO ARCH" rule. At least so far, responses have not been anywhere near what you'd expect if you'd tell people to "RTFM n00b" (in terms of defensiveness and verbal hostility, at least). From the things I've seen (and I've asked other regulars, they seem to agree), the related interactions have been short, clear, and cordial. The first is important to #python because it keeps the signal to noise ratio high. The second is important to the person with the broken package, so they know what to do to fix it and how to get it fixed for other people as well. The last part is important to everyone.
As usual, any and all policy is up for debate, but I really see too much result (not just for #python, but for the people with the broken package as well) and too little badness to consider taking it down right now. I believe I speak for all of the ops and regulars in #python when I say that. Even Allan himself has said that he agrees with the rule, and yes: I do honestly believe that right now, it is the best thing we can actually *do*. That doesn't mean it has to be the best thing bar none: like with software projects, "patches welcome", if you have any suggestions for improving this, we're all ears. However, I've already said: this is temporary, it's going down as soon as we stop getting feedback on it. (Checking if that has occurred or not is in my tickler file for next Friday.) It has already been pointed out in this thread that Arch is a distro with a target audience of above average knowledge. Yes, the rule does expect people to understand the difference between an Arch-specific problem and something that's likely to be unrelated.to whatever distro it is you're running. Even the people who do feel instantly offended and just leave without asking questions, hey, at least they're likely to go to Arch-specific spots next for support, and that's the right place (FWIW I do not believe this to be a significant amount of people). Also, sometimes pointing people to the FM is just the only reasonable thing left to do. If you've got recent-ish logs (24h) I can give you a recent prime example of that. I do doubt that anyone used terminology like 'RTFM n00b'. If you think 'NO ARCH' is the same kind of language, well, we'll just have to agree to disagree there. I could see how someone would think that, but IRC typically forces people to be more brief, and a lot of people understandably mistake that for being blunt or even downright rude. That's an unfortunate side effect of the medium that pretty much every large channel I know of has had to deal with in some way. cheers lvh _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
