Definition of a *stupid* post?

Hi, all,

In an adjacent thread there is a discussion about
“there are no stupid questions, just stupid answers” &c.

Please permit me to have a different point of view.
There are stupid questions.

Here is an (almost) verbatim forum quote:
It doesn’t work. Why? If you do not
fix it immediately, I will stop using it.

Unfortunately, he/she forgot to tell what “it” was.

Next category is those who have never ever opened a manual
and still cannot understand why it does not behave exactly
like x. (And if you do not fix it immediately…)

Now and then I am in a friendly mood and ask about their
operating system, what it is, and from where they obtained it,
in order to arrive at a solution. Very often: no reply.

There are a few forumers with much more persistence than I have.
I admire their patience :slight_smile:

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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You should spend some time doing GIMP support if you want to build some thicker skin around these types of questions… :smiley:

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For Gimp support it is not thick skin. It is battleship-grade armor.

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The question is if it was a question at all, or merely a statement or proclamation.

How about Photoshop support? :see_no_evil::ghost:

Remind me to buy you a beer for your efforts next time we can see each other in person! :wink:

You and the others at https://gimp-forum.net/ are doing good work!

Duly noted…

Hi @Claes ,

I agree. If you teach people and explain something several times and at the end of the lesson someone asks exactly the thing you explained, then this is a stupid question. Because the person did not listen to what you said before. The same is true if you ask questions on a forum, when everything is available in the manual.
However, I did a lot of support on a Ubuntu forum and I also know that you need patience because for beginners it is often difficult to find the appropriate resources even if it seems obvious to the supporter. If people who ask questions do not answer the requests of supporters then this is not stupid but extremely rude.
So, thanks to all the patient helpers on the FOSS support forums!

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In the context of a support forum, the only ‘stupid’ questions are the ones asked without doing a search first. Find out if someone else has had the same question. Look in the documentation. Do a general web search to see if the topic has been addressed elsewhere. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then ask away.

It’s amazing what you can learn just by applying these basic principles.

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Support can be a short-cut to experience. A user may want some image processing, but be unsure what it is called, or even unsure what is logically possible, or possible by a particular product. The product manual may cover all operations the product can do, but the user lacks the experience to realise that their requirement needs a certain combination of operations.

These are not stupid questions. A stupid answer would be “Go away, read the manual until your eyes bleed, and play with the product for a few years. That will give you the experience you need to answer your own question.”

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I happened to have a colleagues who tried to ask super clever questions, finally merely aim for self-publicizing (“look only I am that clever to dig the real challenge”)

THOSE are stupid, silly questions

A game also known as “Stump the Briefer”, or perhaps on this forum “Stump the Developer”. Not necessarily stupid, but definitely not helpful.

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Seen a very recent example.

Now I’m looking for a nickname for these kind of people, who use FOSS and think their demands should be satisfied with top priority by these lazy and incompetent developers.

My first thought is “Kamer” which is a mix of “Camera” and “Karen” but I’m open to suggestions :smile:

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'ello @Ofnuts,
Going nuts, eh?

I see what you mean, but I believe it will be quite difficult
finding a term which will be globally (un/in)correct.

There already is a bunch of acronyms in use.
Of these, I personally am very fond of the Portuguese,
French, and German varieties: User error - Wikipedia

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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Lol!

BIOS: Burro(dumb), Idiota(idiot) Operando(operating the) Sistema(system)

These cover the incompetent users, but I’m after the self-entitled ones.

B/W (a.k.a. besserwisser)?
Hence derived into Messerschmitt?
Or, why not: Messiah complex - Wikipedia

Camren.

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I like that.

I know this is a insufferable liberal attitude but I think people often make mistakes in posts when they have stressful circumstances we cannot see and people at every level make mistakes, some later reaching great heights

On some forum somewhere I did find some ofnuts advice helpful about a moving a channel from one image to another as I like to make masks as separate files

I was looking for an Alexander Pope quote on everybody making mistakes in the moral sphere all the time which I couldn’t find but I found a lot of others which I thought relevant and wanted to share, maybe in the morning I will put this down to heat stroke, certainly if I feel anger nowadays I will write the post in a text editor first, I’m often shocked when I read it in the morning

Maybe Pope worked on a gimp forum

“fools rush in where angels fear to tread”

er, yes

“To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves”

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.”

“Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.”

“Our judgments, like our watches, none
go just alike, yet each believes his own”

“If you want to know what God thinks about money just look at the people He gives it to.”

“To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart”

silentium est aurum