Don't feed the troll...

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

On 06/17/2013 01:23 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 3:04 PM, Ferrous Cranus <support at superhost.gr> wrote:
>> The only thing i'm feeling guilty is that instead of reading help files and
>> PEP's which seem too technical for me, i prefer the live help of an actual
>> expert human being.
> 
> This is definitely a reason to feel guilty. You are asking people to
> provide live help for free, rather than simply reading the
> documentation. 

It is NOT a matter of simply reading the documentation.
I have posted here several times as have many others about 
some of the problems the documentation has, especially for
people who don't already know Python.

Take a look at issue http://bugs.python.org/issue16665
for an example of why the Python doc has some of the problems
that it does.  (Please change the subject line if you want 
to discuss the documentation rather than Nikos.)

While the Python tutorial is a good answer for many people 
it is not the answer for everyone.  Many people don't have 
a large block of time to sit down and go through it from 
beginning to end.  Many people don't learn well reading a
large volume of not-immediately-relevant material, trying
to commit it to memory, and then trying to apply it all 
later, as opposed to looking up those aspects of python 
relevant to what they are attempting at that moment.  (I 
am in that category.)

All these problems are aggravated for people whose native
language is not English.

> If the help files are too technical for you, you will
> need to improve your technical ability. (Though the PEPs shouldn't
> need to concern you, generally.) Live help is a VERY expensive service
> to offer, because it involves an expert's time dedicated to one single
> person. 

Luckily, in a group of volunteers, participants can individually
decide how much their time is worth and answer if they want
or not if they don't.

The reality, regardless of whether you or I think the world should 
not be this way, is that Nikos has embarked on his website building
project and telling him to drop it and come back after he has
learned more is totally ineffectual noise. 

> Collective help is far more efficient - that's why
> documentation exists, because it gets read by far more people than
> wrote it (at least, that's the theory).

Yup.  And it works well most of the time but occasionally not.