
Working with Saved Replies on GitHub - chippy
https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-saved-replies/
======
chippy
I might well find myself copying and pasting some of the advice from Eric
Raymonds "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"
[http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-
questions.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)

Some of the advice in these days of better customer service may be a bit
blunt, for example "RTFM" would at best be considered not newbie friendly and
at worse hostile and actively not supporting diversity.

GitHub is more public and front facing than pre GitHub software projects, and
so I think that many of the advice and examples could be adapted for the
GitHub model.

So, instead of "RTFM" as a canned reply, perhaps a better saved reply would
be:

"Hello, thank you for taking the time to submit this issue. Many new users to
the project can get started helping themselves with reading the documentation
here and here or by searching StackOverflow or Bing search here and here. We
recommend you have a read of these resources and if the problem persists to
write a new Issue. In the meantime, we will close this Issue. Thanks again!
And welcome to our amazing project"

~~~
brudgers
One of the great things about StackOverflow is that it downvotes RTFM answers.
The problem RTFM solves is not a technical one, it's Endless September on the
channel, and the same people get tired of answering the same questions and
being smug and mean and rude is more fun and fosters the sense of tribe. The
William Gibson problem - that the future is not evenly distributed - is better
addressed in other ways.

Sending users elsewhere is probably a bad strategy in many situations.
Particularly before finding out what the real issue is in situations where
having users matters.

