Sorry to post this, but...
#1
Listen guys,

I've wanted to posted something for a while, but before I did I wanted to be very considered about what I type here.

Recently upon looking at the forums, I've noticed an attitude of 'elitism' by a very small number of official team members. I've noticed how people within this community are lambasted, talked down to and are rude to...mostly for nothing more than asking a question that may have been asked before.

Before people start flaming me, I want to re-iterate the fact that this has been a very considered post, and not one to cause offense or anger.

However, there should be no reason whatsoever that ANY person in this community is talked to in such a manner. I'm not going to mention any names here, but I would advise that you go search through the recent posts in the forums to see what I am talking about.

Can I just say this...without the people WITHIN this community, there would be NO community. Sure, I understand that XBMC was never developed for the community, but it is now used BY the community and should, by extension, now be FOR the community. The work carried out by the official team is amazing and furthers just how good this media center is. However, that does not nor should not give anybody the right to lord it over others.

If nothing else, there should be common decency and respect there.

Sorry if this does cause a little offense, it is not my intention. However, there are a lot of very talented people here, and the community as a whole is a precious commodity to this project.

My plea, therefore, is that those members of the community who know that I'm talking to you...I would ask that just think about what you post before you post it.

Thanks for listening.
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#2
Beautifully written, Thank you!
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#3
I agree about being polite and nice to our users. I feel that this is how most of the team is behaving and certainly how I work (except one single exception that I know of).
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#4
I haven't really noticed this, maybe it's because I don't pay much attention to it, but sometimes people are easily misunderstood, try to keep in mind everyone on here has a personal life too.

At the moment everyone is probably really busy finishing their personal stuff for the summer, school/college or work, you name it, so they can work on there project for XBMC in the summer.

So some people might react their frustrations/stress or anger they evolve/experience in personal life on this forum by accident, but most people don't realize it at the moment, most of the time they do afterwards.

I'm not saying everyone should go call each other names now, but just if you ever have a member shouting at you, keep in mind, this might not be personal.

But like I said I haven't noticed anything of this 'elitism' among members or whatsoever, just wanted to share my vision about this.
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#5
I could say the same thing about some users.

You offer help, they ignore and then try to explain how you should have helped.

There certainly is a very small percentage of users who feel owed. So keep this in mind when judging team members.
For python coding questions first see http://mirrors.xbmc.org/docs/python-docs/
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#6
Nuka,

I'm not disregarding that at all and, as a ex-team member I understand the pressure that the team is under. Yes, sometimes it's a thankless task, but I would expect 'certain' members of the team to show a little latitude when responding.

As my parents taught me, manners cost nothing...and this goes for ALL who use the forums and official channel. However, team members are representative of something greater and, by extension, should be setting the example rather than using the "users do it why shouldn't we" argument.

Oh, and you're not one of the people I was thinking of Nuka Wink
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#7
I've been floating around these forums for years, and I can really see both sides of the story (as I'm sure you all do). Yes, newbies continually ask the same questions. And yes, sometimes they are met with what some would call 'rude' replies. I think the problem with 'rude' answers is this:

These developers dedicate so much of their time to enhancing the feature set of xbmc, making it as user friendly and advanced as possible, then jump on the forums and get stupid questions from stupid people who do not dedicate any time at all to researching themselves. They also seem to be the ones who continually answer these questions first. Essentially, they are acting in both a 'development' and a 'support' capacity. I would find that very frustrating if I was a developer.

Now, I have been thinking about this for a while, and tried to do what I'm going to suggest, but will endeavor to do so more in the future:

I have felt that I, as a user, haven't contributed much to the community. So I have decided that the best thing that I can do is help out where possible answering questions on these forums. Now I can't answer many technical questions about the way things work and why, but the devs (even the grumpy one Smile )seem to have no problem answering these specific questions. It's the generic ones that (understandably) get them aggravated. Unfortunately, often the devs are the first (and sometimes only) ones to reply to these questions. I cannot figure out how they find time to code in between all the posts in these forums.

Anyway, I think that advanced users should try to respond more quickly to questions from beginners, rather than leaving it to the devs to answer. I also believe that if the devs don't want to answer politely, they should try to leave the thread alone until someone else answers. That way the new users can get the help they need, and the devs don't need to waste time responding to moronic questions. That's my view of the issue.
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#8
snoxbox Wrote:I've been floating around these forums for years, and I can really see both sides of the story (as I'm sure you all do). Yes, newbies continually ask the same questions. And yes, sometimes they are met with what some would call 'rude' replies. I think the problem with 'rude' answers is this:

These developers dedicate so much of their time to enhancing the feature set of xbmc, making it as user friendly and advanced as possible, then jump on the forums and get stupid questions from stupid people who do not dedicate any time at all to researching themselves. They also seem to be the ones who continually answer these questions first. Essentially, they are acting in both a 'development' and a 'support' capacity. I would find that very frustrating if I was a developer.

Now, I have been thinking about this for a while, and tried to do what I'm going to suggest, but will endeavor to do so more in the future:

I have felt that I, as a user, haven't contributed much to the community. So I have decided that the best thing that I can do is help out where possible answering questions on these forums. Now I can't answer many technical questions about the way things work and why, but the devs (even the grumpy one Smile )seem to have no problem answering these specific questions. It's the generic ones that (understandably) get them aggravated. Unfortunately, often the devs are the first (and sometimes only) ones to reply to these questions. I cannot figure out how they find time to code in between all the posts in these forums.

Anyway, I think that advanced users should try to respond more quickly to questions from beginners, rather than leaving it to the devs to answer. I also believe that if the devs don't want to answer politely, they should try to leave the thread alone until someone else answers. That way the new users can get the help they need, and the devs don't need to waste time responding to moronic questions. That's my view of the issue.

This is exactly true in every way. I'm not a developer here, but obviously I handle development and support on my site. There's something to be said for being nice to even the most annoying users, but some users push the limit a bit. If more users tried providing support, the devs would have to do less of it and the world would be a happier place with rainbow pooping butterflies.
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#9
If we had people in charge of support then I think we'd all be willing to ignore the stupid posts to begin with.

However, in the past, often said posts have sat for well over a day with no response, so I thus respond.

I'm in agreement ofcourse: We want to always portray a professional attitude.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#10
If the users bothered searching and looking in the wiki before posting a question that has already been answered 10 times and is up on the wiki.. It would greatly reduce the demand on us.

Not that it is an good excuse, but it might help to understand why there sometimes gets a but rough.
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#11
Maybe advanced users could post a brief response, ie.

"do a search for 'stackable folders'" or

"see 'smart playlists' in the wiki http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Playlists#Smart_Playlists "

Such a brief, one-line response usually conveys to the user, without being rude and while helping them, that they should do a bit more homework next time before posting.

I myself have needed this type of "hint" in the past, but it has pointed me in the right direction for how to proceed with future questions.

However, sometimes this might be a tremendous help to the user, ie. if they don't know that "stackable folders" are called "stackable folders". In that case, we just provided them with their search terms Wink
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#12
Part of the problem is the search function on our wiki sucks.

One thing I've been wanting is an "auto-replace" feature of the forum to be used to replace some keywords (of which we can keep a list) with links to the wiki.

eg "Do a Debug Log" -> "Do a <link to how to do a Debug Log>"

This hasn't happened yet, but hopefully it is doable and is easy to do. I'll bring it up again with those with the ability to do it. Then perhaps we can have a thread and we can all contribute to some keywords and what they should link to etc.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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