Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dkersten 2403 days ago
Ugh I also find that really offputting. Worse still is it’s the same guy behind SourceHut. Now I need to think about whether I want to continue to use that since if I need help the last thing I want to hear is RTFM. I always do but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss things and need a pointer :(
1 comments
MayeulC 2403 days ago
To be frank, drew answered me RTFM once regarding one of my sway questions. I found the answer valid, because I couldn't find the manual before. As sad as it is, many projects do not ship a man page, which makes it very difficult to find documentation.

Sway has quality man pages, and I very rarely have to find someone else in a chat room or fire up the web browser to find answers. I can understand the devs' frustration: they spent a lot of time writing those up, so have people use them.

Give someone an answer, you'll help him for the day. Show him the man, you'll help him for life :)

link
dkersten 2403 days ago
I get it, but when I reach out for help, its because I wasn't able to figure it out myself and I likely put a significant (relatively speaking) amount of time into it. If its in the manual, it means I overlooked it and could really do with a pointer. If I'm just told RTFM, that leaves a very sour taste.

I understand that devs have to deal with a lot of "dumb" questions, but that doesn't mean they have to be rude. As someone else said, silence would actually be better in this case, but a better response would be something like "hey, that's in the manual, in the blah section" because its not rude, it affirms that it is, indeed, in the manual and gives me a pointer where. Even without the last bit, it would be better. Part of good support is to acknowledge that the person has a problem, even if you can't help. If you don't want to provide support for an open source project (as in the case of the linked issues) then don't respond or at least set up a replacement to turn RTFM into something a bit more human.

> I found the answer valid, because I couldn't find the manual before.

How did RTFM help you find the manual if you didn't find it before, aside from affirming that there is, indeed, a manual?

link