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I don't feel for that guy (Score:2)
Not to be too juvenile, but I'd have to say he started it. His first substantive comments are:
"Wordpress can't process it's own RSS feeds" followed by "its nuts". That could be seen as a bit provocative, and is bound to get a bad response.
The right way to do this would be to say something like ...
"It seems like Wordpress can't process it's own RSS feeds", "I have a standard WP-MU install, and when I do X I get this error: ..."
Straightforward description of the problem, with relevant details and an error mes
Re:I don't feel for that guy (Score:1)
Finally, you have to realize what it's like to be on the developer side of things. Why should you answer someone's question for free when you could be working on the software or looking at porn (hey, it's your time, do what you want) instead?
Here's what I would have said:
< jrockway> hello
< jrockway> so I'm trying to get Wordpress to read its own RSS feed... but it's not working. I think that "foo" should happen, but I just get "bar"
< jrockway> any ideas?
Notice how there is no negative language, and how I'm not demanding an answer? I am just mentioning this as some interesting curiosity that we should all discuss. This is the sort of thing that will get an answer on IRC. Also, note that I didn't say "I'm an idiot, I can't get foo to work" because I know the answer will be "because you're an idiot", and my question will never be answered.
As with anything, you just have to practice and learn how to get better. You can't expect to do anything perfectly the first time you try... why would talking on IRC be any different. After a while, this guy will "get it" (from lurking, and trying out new techniques) and he'll never have a problem again.
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Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you. This guy got himself into trouble for wording things poorly (hint: don't use strong words if nobody on the channel knows you),
Hey, Ovid, I just wanted to come back and mention that as a result of this discussion, I reevaluated a non-technical online discussion that I had a couple of months ago and realized that I was at fault. It was just like jrockway says here: I showed up using strong words (not swearing or anything, but I was ranting, and I said so), and nobody knew me. They responded to my rant with anger, even though I wasn't ranting at them and expected sympathy. They bit my head off, misrepresented what I had said so th
J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
Re: (Score:2)
Yay. You may be better than me here. I'm still struggling with this :)
Re: (Score:2)
J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers