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Re: [LUG] Are we too technical for our own good ?

 

Neil Williams wrote:
> Lest anyone new to the group forgets: we 'old hands' were all newbies
> once too. 

Which reminds me that I suppose I am an old hand on the list as well but 
took a different course.  While I used to be an active contributor and 
often tried (sometimes quite ineptly) to help new users with their 
questions, in the last couple of years I have been lurking  on the list 
whilst spending most of my spare time contributing to a creative commons 
project ( http://www.geograph.org.uk ) which has left me little time to 
'mess around' with Linux.  As a consequence I have a high regard for 
distributions which as far as possible 'just work' because I don't want 
to spend evenings deep in configuration problems. So no surprise that 
I'm using kubuntu 7.04 on both desktop and laptop.

But to get back on topic, I think the high level of technical discussion 
on the list can be off-putting to those new to Linux but I think that is 
OK if we can give useful answers to newcomers questions.  Sometimes I 
feel that there is a tendency to try to take people to a levels of 
technical understanding they are not prepared to go to.  It's possible 
in a face-to-face conversation to take the decision that, while there is 
a solution to their problem it's not one you think they could learn to 
implement, much more difficult to do that on a mailing list.

Does that make sense? I'm not sure, what the heck - post it anyway :)

Tony

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