If I’m starting a project that I’m a little shaky with, I’ll go ahead and join the IRC channel (or channels) right away and observe a little. Jumping into a conversation on IRC is a little like a jam session — you have to weave yourself into the conversation.

Once you have someone’s attention on IRC, be as clear as possible; if necessary, break the problem into chunks. Have the URLs you’ve use to research the problem at your fingertips. And don’t be trying to install something that’s old — you’ll be unlikely to get support. (I made a comment recently on #fedora about how my yum updates had dropped off to nothing on a system where I’m running F7 — I was practically laughed out of the place, since F9 is the current version.)

Try not to get emotional, even if your correspondents do — stick to the facts. This is their neighborhood; they’re allowed to vent, and you’re the visitor, so you’ve got to behave and play nice. Remember, everyone there is a volunteer, so you’ve gotta play nicely.

Read advice from klortho - at least 2 will apply to any problem you have (even when you’re a perl guru you’ll still have at least 2 apply when you’re really stuck).

I’m surprised at how much people are complaining about the tone of the response.. Firefly set the tone by wading in and calling a piece of software broken despite it being widely used successfully. He then got all dramatic about it and wound up those on the channel.

The guy got help for free despite trash talking the project, making an incredibly stupid mistake and making an idiot of himself and then complains that OSS doesn’t give him warm fuzzy feelings. *sigh*

I’m pretty sure that the same people would have matched politeness and and paying attention with the same response.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

In my opinion, you actually broke this rule, which I find is the most important:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#symptoms

I find that when debugging things, the most time is wasted when you are not attacking the right problem. If you’re not willing to back up and try a different approach, you’ll end up stuck again.

This will especially lead to strife, because then someone has to convince you that you are wrong, and someone’s ego will end up bruised. Of course, it’s perfectly alright to the approaches you have taken to the problem, but you should make sure your conclusion is justified before advocating it as what’s wrong.

In a sense, the opensource community is no better than any other community out there, and the anonymity of IRC, as well as the whole established group vs. new individual thing often results in people with short fuses and a vocabulary that could do with some cleaning.

The best thing to do about it, is to remember how you were treated and how you felt about it, and then avoid treating others the same way, when they come to you for help.

In fact, freenode has a document on Channel Guidelines, available from their website. This document is a very good read for anyone, and it gives you some good views on what to do and what not to do.

I agree with you, that some of the responses you received were uncalled for, and that you did take some abuse which you shouldn’t have had to, but you yourself also “broke” (for lack of better word) one of the usual channel guidelines:

“Take critiques to private message. Criticizing someone’s behavior on channel holds them up to public scrutiny in a negative way. It’s usually overkill. In your messages, don’t address the subject of whether you have channel operator privileges; just be courteous.”

I know you were trying to be courteous, because that’s the view you presented here, but when you wrote “hey man keep it coming, I’ll take 10 minutes of abuse if it helps me fix this” that made him stand out badly and thus he reacted accordingly.

In general, it’s fine to say that you’re inexperienced, but criticizing other users behavior towards you (even when the critique is correct/said in jest) will only lead to more problems — since you are the newcomer, any critique will be seen as a frontal attack on the group or established individual, sort of like when an animal challenges another for domination. If you feel that people are abusing you, either ignore them or leave the channel.

It’s the jungle law and I’m not very fond of it myself, but that’s where pretty much any unregulated medium (and IRC usually is) ends up.

If I had your problem to solve I would have started off with, “I can’t get Wordpress to process its own RSS feeds.” Then, “It keeps telling me, ‘Could not find an RSS or ATOM feed at that URL.’” Assuming I’m not yet in a conversation, “I’ve read the documentation and tried everything I can think of.” If nobody responds, then I’d say, “Does anyone have any ideas?”

When someone starts to engage I would go straight for technical details. for instance after the second question if someone said, “What are you doing?” I’d respond with, “I have a fresh install of 2.5. I’m trying to get it to read its own RSS feed, and that is what it is telling me.”

The point being to not blame in any way, shape, or form. And to give people enough details that they can immediately feel good about being able to actually help.

You need to learn how to troubleshoot and how to report problems clearly, not to mention getting at least a bit more familiar with the tools you’re using.

Seriously, if you’re that out of your depth then hire someone, if it’s not worth paying somebody do it then why are you bothering, if it’s a hobby then spend some real time learning the craft and the tools.

Yes you got some stick and they could have been nicer to you, but when you have countless noobs wasting your time (how long did it take before you checked the source data was OK? how long did it take for you to provide useful information ? imagine people interupting you at your work or at home and asking for help to do something clearly beyond their abilities, it get’s tired pretty quick.

Is anyone reading down to the bottom of the article?? I wrap everything up and put a positive spin on my experience, and advise help-seekers to be careful in how you ask for help.