FC2 working fine (Re:)

[Stephan Matthiesen]

Hi,

Am Dienstag, 22. Juni 2004 20:09 schrieb Don Dupy:
> I for one am sticking with FC1, for now
> With all the posts, I am real leary of going to FC2.
> It's doing everything I want it to do and doing it well.

Just for the record: My FC 2 is running well, I had a smooth transition from 
FC 1 and can't complain. The transition was done in an afternoon (start 
update, go away to do something else, come back in the evening, finished).

I just mention this because mailing lists tend to give a very selective, 
biased picture. Lots of people with lots of problems, but all the millions of 
users who are happy have no reason to post to the list, so they are 
invisible. So I think when you are planning an upgrade, it would be good to 
look at the complete picture, and this seems to me that the likelihood of 
something seriously going wrong is very small.

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the user base has problems. 
Any data on this?

Of course it is bad if there are problems, and statistics doesn't help you if 
you actually are the unlucky person. So I'm not saying that one shouldn't 
care, or that bugs are ok. Quite the opposite. It is understandable that 
people are angry when things go wrong. But the developers are not necessarily 
the right target for this anger. Sometimes things just go wrong without 
anybody being responsible for it, that's how the world is. The best we can do 
is work together and help each other making things better.

I would like to thank all the competent people here who try to give answers 
even to questions that don't give much details, or that are less than 
friendly. It is understandable that they also get frustrated when you try to 
help and get an angry response. Really, you are helping many people a lot, 
even if you get less positive feedback than you deserve.

On the other hand I would also like to raise some awareness of some 
difficulties for non-experts. Please do remember that for less experienced 
users it may be very difficult to ask the right thing and give the correct 
details. Something behaves in an unexpected way, but you may not know which 
programs, scripts, whatever are involved. 

It is of course a fair answer to say "Search the archive" if a question has 
been asked before. But again for many users it may be difficult to do that, 
because the user may not know the correct terms, or not sufficiently precise 
terms ("sound not working").

Sometimes a user may already have searched the archives with the wrong terms, 
and then the reply "Search the archive" can seem quite arrogant. Also 
remember that people from other (cultural) backgrounds may be more sensitive 
to "unpolite" answers. So perhaps often a more careful wording leads to less 
tension. Instead of something like:
"Why haven't you searched the archive? This has been discussed so many 
times!!"
better:
"I remember that this has been asked before. Can you search the archive? 
Perhaps searching for 'x' and 'y' leads you to the old posts. Hope that 
helps."
As you see, a reply like this isn't really more work, but it may be more 
helpful and sounds much more friendly.

I'm saying this because we will have to live with the situation that more and 
more unexperienced users ask for help. Although I agree that it would be good 
if anybody asked their questions in a friendly way with all the necessary and 
relevant details, realistically this won't happen. There are always new 
people who have to learn this, and people who are unfamiliar with the style 
of mailing lists. So I ask the experienced users to remain patient.

Again, thanks for all the good work, and for all the competent answers.

All the best
Stephan