We no longer say RTFM, read the fucking manual, anymore. I wonder why that is. Is it because more and more projects are moving all documentation to discord?
Some projects still have manuals… But there seems to be less expectation people will familiarize themselves with manuals anymore. I wonder why
I haven’t seen a good BOFH story in forever as well…
Maybe Reddit, and Google, got good enough that you could search for your specific problem without having to know the general documentation. And the expectation simply became point me to my specific problem
A big part of it is manuals are increasingly non-present or unhelpful. Though, home appliances normally have useful ones still and I have used them on several occasional when doing repairs.
more and more projects are moving all documentation to discord
This is absolutely a trend that needs to stop. It is worse for individuals as info is completely unsearchable; and it is worse for the Discord admins and helpers as they have to answer the same questions over and over as nobody can find previous answers to the same question. A classic forum is optimal for public support.
Rtfm is so unhelpful even when it is correct.
I guess it’s a teach a person to fish mantra, but still.
Rtfm is so unhelpful even when it is correct.
A lot of the culture around computing used to be just people being huge cunts to beginners so they can feel superior
I never got that impression. I thought people were trying to teach, a little harshly, self-reliance so that people can participate in the community while holding their own and not drowning community volunteers with already answered questions. That are in the FAQ / documentation.
Kind of the opposite of what you get with discord documentation, where people come to the support room and ask the same questions over and over and over and over again, but instead of pointing people at a documentation, they’re really sophisticated projects put a bot which kind of does the same thing
Yeah that’s usually been the stated reason for as long as I can remember, but that absolutely wasn’t what it was in practice especially earlier on (say the 90’s). Getting help for eg a Linux problem wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience for a long time exactly because people thought they’d be “helpful” by acting like massive assholes
I never got that impression.
Getting told RTFM then getting banned will get you that impression pretty quickly.
Now if they tell you RTFM then link you to the exact page you need that’s fine, but sometimes they will literally just say RTFM even if you said you looked at the manual and didn’t find anything on what you need.
- can’t RTFM when no one WTFM
- software projects with manuals are an exception – most projects can’t be bothered (rare cases, they just export the API calls to a README and call that the manual)
- hardware projects follow the stereotype of a manual in Chinese, machine translated to English, and distributed as a fourth generation photocopy
The drive to forums makes most people just “Google it” for a step by step solution.
Also, most digital projects, and definitely most manufactured products, no longer provide any kind of user servicability. E.g, Factory service manuals are impossible to find for any automobile later than like 2006, they are all now obfuscated behind dealership database tools and subscriptions such that the information is never made publically available. And aftermarket manuals are flaky and incomplete at best, downright misleading and dangerous at worst. This basically applies to almost every consumer electronic, appliance, and frankly almost all digital software now too- real, detailed technical manuals just… aren’t there. Because whoever is producing them makes more pure profit on selling service than the product.
Can’t tell anyone to RTFM when there is no manual to read because the profit seeking corporation would rather you pay their dealer network $600 a visit to do basic simple things. When there is no manual, the only way left to learn about anything is either to start bodging it yourself until you figure it out (which most people are not capable of doing, or will destroy their property in the process), or rely on the forum posts of random people online who do have personal or professional experience with the things they’re trying to fix.
