On Monday 06 November 2006 12:35, Graeme Fowler wrote:
> Perhaps the problem isn't so much that trying to improve/change/mangle
> default package configs is causing a problem, rather that there's a
> [significant] proportion of any user base who simply refuse to take the
> time to read the supporting documentation. Fiddling with the configs
> just makes them that much more obvious.
I agree with this view, reading the article suggests he is mostly talking
about irc support as opposed to what comes to the mailing list. The typical
user who comes to an irc channel wants instructions along the lines of
"edit[1] the file /etc/somewhere/blah .. add this line, restart your daemon
and voila.
I tend to hang out on #exim[2] on freenode and as a result I've learned a lot
about Exim on Debian[3] considering I've only run it once for three hours :D.
As for supporting the different configurations, efforts like the wiki quoted
in the article (
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/Recipes/DistrosDefaultLayout )
and probably some form of RTFM bots are probably the only way to support this
increasing user base that simply will _not_ read the documentation.
--
patrick
[1] sometimes you may need to replace the word edit with the whole "type vi"
and "restart your daemon" with kill -HUP `cat /path/to/pid_file`
[2] err... as pjo
[3] which says a lot for the Debian documentation..
