[hhw]

At the end of the day, RTFM is much more helpful than spoon feeding someone an answer. Maybe it comes off as being an asshole, but a little shame can be a good motivator for a neophyte to learn how to teach themselves, and they will be better off for it in the long run. "Teach a man to fish" and all that.

[eropple]

Do you want a shovel for that giant hole you're digging?

"A little shame is a good thing" says to everybody around you that you're more interested in feeling good about yourself than helping people. And it's a joke to boot. I've been doing this for around fifteen years, I've written multiple telnet server applications and a MUD client, and I didn't know about this feature in telnet/rlogin/ssh.

[hhw]

Or maybe because I was once a neophyte that was shamed into RTFM, which had a very positive effect on my life, I'm advocating other people RTFM also? Which would hopefully help them as much as it did me? This is generally how things work for online communities, be it an IRC channel, a mailing list, or web forums. Why shouldn't it be that way on HN, especially as RTFM is as much part of hacker culture as anything.

Meanwhile, you're resorting to making baseless assumptions about a total stranger on the Internet, and bringing your own credentials into this rather than focusing on the argument at hand. Who's digging the giant hole? Who's more interested in feeling good about himself?

I really couldn't care less what your personal story is, or what you've imagined up about mine. Let's stick to why someone should or should not RTFM, okay?

[jmccree]

If someone had posted a question asking how to end an unresponsive ssh session, perhaps RTFM would be an appropriate response. In this case someone is sharing knowledge that could be useful to many people. Just because something is written in a man page, does that mean it should be locked away to only those intrepid enough to read the man pages of every tool they use? Community curated knowledge is useful.

As well, I'm not sure if you're intending to, but you're coming off as an elitist asshole. Not knowing an esoteric bit of what is essentially ssh trivia does not make someone a neophyte. For anyone who entered the field in the past 15-20 years, hitting the (x) close window/tab button is likely more second nature than 'enter ~ .' Please don't be like the guy who hangs out in IRC help channels just to tell people wanting help to RTFM.

[hhw]

I will concede that nobody posted the question, but I do think RTFM is still appropriate as a surprisingly large number of people here apparently have not done so. Because it's written in a man page, it's certainly not locked away. And reading it is hardly going to extreme lengths. Man pages are precisely there to be an easy way to look something up, and are written and maintained by the community, so they certainly qualify as community curated knowledge. It's also a much more efficient way of spreading information than a blog post. I'm not sure where you get the notion that man pages are for a select few and not for everyone. They're also all on the web so it's easy to search their contents as well.

I would take the position that anyone who hasn't read the man page for something is a bit of a neophyte, or a novice at best. Unless perhaps they've read the source. How else are you going to learn something, without reading the documentation? Online tutorials and blog posts make for a poor substitute at best, and being less direct often introduce inaccuracies and other misinformation. I think it's fair to say that someone whose entire knowledge of a subject is based on incomplete information is not an expert. Not to say that man pages are perfect; they can be outdated and inaccurate themselves. But perhaps if more people read them, more people would submit revisions to make the documentation better. If suggesting that people read the proper documentation makes me an elitist asshole, so be it.

I don't quite agree with your 15-20 years timeline; GNOME and KDE were only founded about 15 years ago, and it was a few years before they matured to the point where decent windowing support was commonplace, so it wouldn't have been a given that you would have a full GUI environment at that time. Opening and closing xterm in twm was enough of a hassle to warrant using screen to accomplish windowing instead, which is much more esoteric than ~. Using ssh from an actual console without a GUI was still pretty common at the time, at the very least as part of setting up a box to the point where it had a GUI. But that is all beside the point. ~. takes less time than closing a window/tab and opening a new one, be it through a mouse or a keyboard sequence. And it doesn't nuke your scrollback history. This is just as true today as it was 15-20 years ago. If it's still useful enough to vote up a post, it should be useful enough to read about in a man page.

More people should be like the guys who hang out in IRC help channels. If you think they're there just to tell people to RTFM, you are very much mistaken. They are generally genuinely helpful people. However, they're not inclined to be as helpful to people who come waltzing in demanding everything they want to know handed to them on a silver platter, when they could have looked it up themselves with minimal effort. I don't think it's wrong to point out that there's no place for that sense of entitlement. However when someone asks a question who's clearly done their research but is still stuck on an issue, you'll find the same people who normally respond with RTFM will do everything they can to help. I don't think it's too much to ask to take enough consideration of their time not to waste it with something that can be answered in the first page of Google results. I would posit that instead of these people being labelled elitist assholes, a lot of people should be labelled entitled assholes instead.

[eropple]

Being a shaming douche doesn't help people--it hurts them. Some react in an in-the-end-positive method because they are hurt by people like you--they develop scar tissue to inure themselves against your consciously-adopted sociopathy. Most say "fuck it, I won't deal with these people", throw their hands up, and leave. It's toxic behavior and it is unacceptable because they are more desirable people to have in a community than people who glorify the shaming of people who don't know obscurities.

Be a better person.

[hhw]

So expecting someone else to take 10 minutes of their time to explain something to you, when you could have just spent 5 minutes of your own makes the other guy a douche? Really?

Anyone emotionally fragile enough to turn away over someone telling them to try to find answers on their own before pestering others probably isn't cut out to be part of the community in the first place, at least not a technical one, seeing as how they're too lazy to do it, and selfish enough to think that their own time is more valuable than that of the person helping them.

If people followed your advice, aside from the more experienced people shooting themselves in the face, they'd waste all their time answering questions for those too self-entitled to put in any efforts of their own where their expertise isn't even utilized, while the other neophytes who have a genuine interest and a willingness to put in their own efforts wouldn't have a resource to turn to.

Maybe it's toxic behavior to you, but it's human nature and the modus operandi because the set of technical experts is small to begin with, the set of technical experts who have enough patience to answer beginners' questions on a regular basis is much smaller still, and the set of technical experts willing to endlessly put up with the self-entitled and intellectually indolent is as rare as unicorns.

Be more realistic and open-minded to other perspectives.

[eropple]

> probably isn't cut out to be part of the community in the first place

Thank you for so wonderfully illustrating the problem you wish to perpetuate.

"Be more realistic?" I am being realistic. I'm telling you that being an asshole is bad. That is quite realistic. But it means having to not get your jollies. So have fun abusing beginners, as you think is your right. I hope never to encounter you in a project I care about.

[hhw]

It has nothing to do with abusing beginners, and everything about helping people who are actually willing to learn versus those that just want someone to do the work done for them, because the reality is there isn't enough of experts' time available to do both. You've more or less completely ignored what I've said, and are just sticking to your preconceived notions about some stereotype you've ascribed to me. It's rather hypocritical that you regard yourself highly enough as a moral authority to tell strangers on the Internet to "Be a better person", while calling them an "elitist asshole".

I'm quite happy to never encounter someone who can't put together an intellectually honest argument and instead resorts to straw man arguments, appeals to authority, and ad hominem attacks. You can label me an asshole all you want, but I'll let your own words speak as to what type of person you are.