RTFM?

to point people to where the information is in the handbook and suggest that they use it and the search function as resources. A number of people do this already in their support responses.

Furthermore, if the handbook is wanting in regards to answering a specific question, it would be worthwhile for those providing support to consider editing the handbook to provide the answer and then linking to the appropriate page.

I am a relative newbie here on drupal.org, but I am firm in some other systems. Thus, while I need support here, I provide it elsewhere - I know the problem from both sides.

And one thing you can be sure of is that, no matter how well the documentation is written, no matter how big you put a "search before you post"-sign on the site, someone will always ask the questions that have been answered hundreds of times.

Although it drives me crazy if someone does that where I am the one answering the questions, I may even have asked some of them here.

I think the problem is that each new system you start out using is following its very own inner logic. And until you get the grips of this very logic, you are damned to ask dumb questions. A good search function helps; but until you have a basic idea of how things work, you will probably use the wrong search terms, ending up clueless.

Of course you could avoid most dumb questions by reading the documentation from the very beginning to the very end, but (be honest now!) who ever does that? Especially on systems like drupal, where most functionality comes really intuitive (big thumbs-up for that!), while some other functions require a deep understanding for the thought-patterns of a drupal-veteran.

Short result of a long post: I don't think you can really avoid questions of this type. On the forums where I am the one with knowledge, I try to answer them in a short but nice way, providing the relevant link(s) in my answer.

I don't think the questions should be ignored, but the occasional RTFM, when linked to the appropriate manual page, can be simultaneously helpful and disciplinary.

We could integrate helpful responses into the documentation. I've been remiss here, having been recruited to help in that effort, but been tied up with other work so far.

Different people learn and grok in different ways, so more than one way to explain something always is potentially helpful. One person may respond to a simple visual, while someone else might need step-by-step, while someone else might need to understand the logic behind it all.

One thing that would help is integrating the trip-search module into Drupal.org. I'm really loving it -- it seems to get much more relevant hits, prioritized well (and with prioritization parameters given admin-configurable weights). Also, searches can be limited to just the documentation or just the forums, or just the issues, etc. As it is, it can be something of a challenge to use search to find relevant info. The most relevant post from last week might not show up on the search until page 8 on the results.

In general, I'm not predisposed to take the strict father approach and keep telling people to just look it up. It seems that people usually just need a little help here or there and then before you know it they're helping others. In my book, there are no dumb questions, only unhelpful answers. That's my own take anyway, written as someone who was asking some of those dumb questions at the start.

.:| Laura • pingV |:.

I see your point Sami..and agree with your idea of pointing people to the handbook.

The first steps of a drupal user and the first experience of the drupal.org site should be a positive one all round...

As a relatively new person myself to php/mysql and all that entails I remember my first steps with drupal were made infinitely easier by the support forum and as a result I feel cool about helping a newbie who asks, what might be a simple/dumb question or a question already covered in the handbook.

I think it might be an idea to adopt a balanced approach whereby newbie posts are responded to with a brief "here's what you do" + link to a specific handbook page (navigating that can be a bit daunting for a complete newbie) + a tip and nudge to do a search first in future before posting.

To be honest, I don't think the newbie posts will ever stop and ignoring them will give a newbie who hasn't been here for a while, a sense of "open source...but closed minds"...type thing.

I think if we adopt a positive approach, as above..hopefully we can limit those unneccessary repeat questions to just 1 per user. i..e they appreciate a quick response and the "hey, listen...before you post in future..check out the [appropriate link].."

Of course, I could be wrong and it will just encourage lazy gits who just post and wait for someone to work it out for them....but I doubt it.

Dub

DUBLIN DRUPALLER
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A drupal user by chance and a dubliner by sheer luck.
Using Drupal to help build Artist & Band web communities.

While documentation is important and people reading it is vital as well, active forums are what sets Drupal apart from many CMS's. I tried many and chose Drupal because people would actually help me witht the stupid questions. The Docs. make many assumptions that account for specific tech knowledge of users. Am I an "administrator, developer, user?" Because books can have nodes in more than one chapter, there is a problem in that a user may miss information buried in the developer book, they as an admin need.

I've had stupid questions answered for me, and now try to return the favor. Forums allow more specific questions then a handbook or faq and let posters give more detailed and specific answers that benefit everyone.

However, I did see a module somewhere that searches a FAQ for users questions before sending them to forums...hmmm, where did I see that? Another help could be introducing tags or free taxonomy that lets community link the handbook and forum posts in a more natural and searchable way. All in all, keep the community spirit alive, even a link to a handbook node can be a huge help to someone and bodes well for Drupal.

I am a newbie, I learn building my first ever Drupal site, and I know one thing for sure - trip_search (via SQL) is much better. No offense.
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Working on a bilingual mini-portal - www.archeologic.net

I wrote a module for this a while ago. It scans submitted posts for expressions and points to possible answers. But I've never gotten around to installing it and setting it up properly :P.

Still, I'm not sure it would help all that much. Most people who post repeat questions often don't post enough information to successfully id it as such.

http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/modules/faqsuggest/

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If you have a problem, please search before posting a question.

As someone who has a lot of experience, coming to Drupal was a frustrating and humiliating experience. It is a totally different architecture than what I have come to expect in a content management system.

The documentation has grown organically and contains no reference to what versions each page applies to or doesn't, in some cases it says "you no longer need this in version x.x" but does not say what you need in version 4.6.

Modules and even templates are not portable from one version to another, so the existence of a module (eg. checkmail) doesn't mean that there will be any way to get it to work, and yet other modules have been moved to core.

The api documentation in most cases gives little information about what the input and output parameters do/require etc. For that you need to read the code.

Finally there is the word Taxonomy, which still gives me a chill when I see it.

I have been writing interactive systems for 25 years and web software for over 10 years. I have worked on web servers on Solaris, System V, BSD, Linux, plus Apache and IIS on Windows 98, NT, 2K, and XP. I have considerable experience with PHP and mySQL plus I have used, installed, trained and even written many content management systems.

It has taken me 2 months to be comfortable with Drupal and to get a handle on where to find and how to interpret the documentation. I have yet to get a site working (It took an hour to get the site live and running, but am just now getting to the point where I have a guess at how to make a menu work... about to try now).

I have finally reached the point where I can help others, and the pain is still fresh enough (still struggling with taxonomy and the unbelievable fact that you need to patch modules at the command line to install some modules.) .

Have more sympathy for users new to Drupal. Anyone missing experience in PHP, MySQL, UNIX command line, CVS, HTML, CSS, UNIX file system, University level biology and language studies (Taxonomy), or who (as in my case) thought they could get by without reading the source code, will NEVER understand Drupal without help.

Clueless newbie posts will always be there. They aren't going away. We were all clueless newbies at some time, in some area. We've all asked dumb questions somewhere.

Drupal has a reputation of having an unfriendly developer community, I think because of the way newbies are sometimes treated so nastily. Do we want to make it worse?

I think the Drupal project is a great one, and during the 3 months I've used Drupal, I've learned a bunch, and found Drupal to be much more than I expected.

But to be honest, and as objective as possible, there is not much of a manual. Also, the advice from experienced users is often provided under the (false) assumption that users know more than they do. I've found very few "instructions" to be straightforward--often they are more like hints.

I have nothing of course against figuring out some things for myself. However, if a forum for discussion and help is available, then real help should be provided.

Enough griping--a tangible suggestion is to have module contributors provide more extensive directions and examples. One paragraph is often just not enough. I almost always have to install a module to figure out if it does what it seems to claim; i.e., the descriptions are not clear.

David Cannatella

I've been working with Drupal about a year, and recently tried to implement some of the new 4.6 functionality on my primary site. After asking twice for help with a problem and being told to RTFM, somebody finally actually looked at the problem and noted that TFM omitted a step vital in my situation. Telling a newbie (or anyone) to RTFM should not be considered a solution -- they may be telling you the documentation has errors.

I'm not a big fan of manuals, personally. I don't think I'm alone, in the Drupal world, or in the software development world in general. Haven't we all heard the old joke, "if all else fails, read the manual"? If I have a problem or question, I'm probably more likely to look for the answer in the code, or ask a question on the forums, before I go searching for a handbook page or existing forum topic that answers it for me.

So my attitude is, if I don't read the manual, why should I expect others to? Especially newbies, who probably don't even know where to start, when it comes to navigating the enormous mass of nodes that is the 'drupal documentation'.

I've made a habit of browsing through the new forum topics every few days, and looking for any questions that I might be able to answer. If I find any such forum topics, then I generally post a long and in-depth reply as a comment on that topic.

Many would argue that such responses belong in the handbook, and not as random comments floating around in the forums. But I prefer to give newbies some TLC (Tender Loving Care). I prefer to give them an answer that's specific to their particular situation, and that will help them more than any manual page ever could.

I don't exactly know why I bother doing this. Maybe it's because, after 6 months of involvement in Drupal, after developing several modules, after writing many patches, and even after doing some paid work as a Drupal consultant, I still feel like a newbie myself. Maybe it's because I realise that new users are the most precious things we have, and that we can't afford to give them a bad first impression. Maybe it's because I just get a good feeling when I make someone else's life easier. I'd say it's a mixture of all these things.

I also feel that it's necessary to provide in-depth help in forum posts, because quite frankly our formal documentation is up sh** creek. I know a lot of work is being done in this regard, with Handbook v2 and all, but we still have a long way to go. A lot of the time, the only place to find a definitive answer to something is to look at the code itself. And newbies obviously can't be expected to do this.

Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh

I may be responsible for some of those newbie questions, but I don't think they are a problem. As my understanding grows I will try to help the newbies out, while you can answer the more sophisticated questions. Many times the problem is that you don't know what your issue is. You're just stuck. In this case a human answer even if it's "just" pointing to the the relevant page is extremely helpful.

I started using google to search drupal.org and got much better results than with the built in search engine. I think that should be encouraged. The search syntax is simple: "keyword1 keyword2 site:drupal.org"
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http://creativebits.org

I'm a newbie and the manual doesn't answer my questions! I wish there was better documentation. My questions weren't answered in the forum either. Sometimes newbies don't know the terminology-- experts will call it one thing and the newbie calls it something else. Also, people who post need to use appropriate subject lines (aka titles).

As one member said, no matter how well the documentation is written, or how much 'searching' is emphasized, people are ALWAYS going to ask questions that have been asked before (or have obvious answers).

I think the only way to deal with it is to just answer the question nicely, even if it is the eleventy billionth time you've answered it.

Newbies aren't going to go away no matter what actions are taken. The best, most effective thing to do is just realize every new person is going to have a ton of questions.

We shouldn't act so surpised and/or upset at such questions; we've seen them come time and time again - they're nothing new. Obviously they haven't stopped in the past, so why would they stop now?

We just need to be more understanding and realize these types of questions are exactly what a 'newbie' section of the forums are for. If we don't feel like answering a question we've seen countless times before, we should just not answer and someone else politely will.

If newbie questions bother you, don't read them.

I've always been an advocate for 'newbies' on every forum I am part of. A lot of people like to take their heat out on the newbies and get upset with them - but the newbies aren't doing anything wrong. The users who get angry and frustrated by repetitive questions are the ones doing something wrong (in my opinion).

Divide the forums up, create a section for newbies, and just know it's going to be full of those ever-repetitive questions. For people who hate newbie questions, they can just not read them. For others, they know where to find them. Simple as pie :-)
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Josh Stevens
Nautilus7 Design | www.nautilus7.com

Telling someone to read the handbook is bad advice. Don't RTFM. No one will. It's like telling someone who doesn't know English to read the dictionary.

The advice that should be given out is GFWTFM. That means "Get Familiar With the Funny Manual." Browse it. Find out what's in it. What sections does it have? What kind of information is there? Some sections will naturally peak your curiousity and you may well read some of it.

If you find the handbook confusing, it's most likely because you didn't INSTANTLY find an answer to your problem. That's because you did not GFWTFM. One of the first things I did was GFWTFM. It didn't take long and it helped me become quite proficient with Drupal. There is very good information in there, you just have to know where to look.

Is the manual perfect? No. If you find a mistake, a glaring omission, or confusing language you can contribute to make it better. If you don't have the time or talent, donate some cash. That's the beauty of open source. It gives you real power to make a difference.

No, please do not ignore the newbies. Even if they ask questions answered in the documentation, try to give them the answer together with a reference to the docs.

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NSK, Admin of Drupal-based site http://www.wikinerds.org

If people are new, I prefer them to do what feels comfortable to them. I never say RTFM.