
I don’t do errors, and my name isn’t Google - rayvega
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2009/03/23/i-donrsquot-do-errors-and-my-name-isnrsquot-google.aspx
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lsb
This blog post has a very arrogant tone. If you've made something your user
doesn't understand, perhaps the problem is in explaining it.

Assuming that the person isn't stupid, they can theoretically understand the
answer, but they haven't found the answer before emailing you.

NearlyFreeSpeech charges people under a penny a month, most of the time, for
hosting, and gladly answers any question posed. But they have a prominent
notice that it's not free to answer a question, and would people please help
themselves by searching the fora first.

Perhaps you could helpfully say, "If you've got a specific error message,
chances are lots of other people have had that error message too, and blogged
about it: google any sufficiently long error message, and you might find the
answer there. People don't usually answer here within the hour, but ask away
if you can't find it."

Why would you waste your time getting angry at random clueless people on the
internet?

~~~
devin
My comment on his site:

"This is the nature of the beast. Developers build software. The good ones
support it, and the bad ones make it someone else's problem. The good ones
write documentation, and the bad ones tell you to read the code.

I can sympathize with your situation. I go through something similar nearly
every day at work, but I am not the kind of person who will tell someone to
%!@# off because they don't know how to search for errors in Google.

Searching for errors with google is strange at first for everyone I think. The
best thing to do is to both answer the question directly and refer them to a
google search that would give them the same answer (with the keywords you
used, and perhaps WHY you chose those keywords). I know it sucks, but I
remember being a greenhorn and not knowing how to search for some syntax-laden
error, which parts of that error would help me in Google, and so on. Some of
it was brute force, and some of it was learning by example.

In short, don't be so quick to assume someone is lazy for asking a question.
Don't be so quick to assume someone is stupid because they haven't been
Googling compiler errors for 10 years. Google has a simple design, but that
doesn't mean the construction of queries is equal in its ease. I think most
people need a refresher on Boolean logic and how it works in their queries.
Google has pretty much put that in their black box, IMHO, to the detriment of
a lot of newbs to the net. Perhaps google should consider putting up a little
mini guide on how one might search for things they find in particular
contexts. Errors should certainly be in that list. I consider myself a pretty
good Googler (although I think this mentality is the same as everyone
believing they're good at driving or thinking they themselves have a good
sense of humor), but I would happily read an official Google writeup on tips
for extracting good search terms from example contexts. "

~~~
rs
Very good comments :)

Patience is a virtue.

From my experience running xp-dev.com - I do get a good handful of users
submitting support tickets that sounds really really arcanely simple, but my
approach is to reply and solve their issue and immediately put it in on the
wiki.

Even then, there are some users who don't read the wiki and help documentation
at all, and rather than loosing patience, I just point them towards the docs
and most are happy to read it and say thank you.

Only once did I have a really long conversation with a user, but he/she? was
really new to the world of bug tracking and version control systems, and just
needed a little hand-holding. The whole conversation is going up on the wiki
as well.

