It's interesting to compare that guide "How to report bugs effectively with ESR's "How to ask questions the smart way" [1]. They both cover similar material, but the styles are extremely different. The latter is rather hostile to the reader: "If ... then you are one of the idiots we are talking about." "If you decide to come to us for help, you don't want to be one of the losers." It's also heavy on "us vs them", how we are experts and you need to treat us properly.
You know, it just occurred to me that the "How to ask questions" document is targeted as much at hackers and how they should maintain their "standards" than at users who are asking questions. For example, the document has approving examples of "logically impeccable but dismissive" hacker answers; these make more sense as instructions on how a hacker should respond than as something relevant to a user.
I guess my point is that I had read the "How to ask questions" document for decades and viewed it as an objective document, not realizing how arrogant and "gatekeeping" it is.
I agree, that "how to ask questions the smart way" article always left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps there should be a "how to answer questions" companion piece.
esr seems to have a pretty big ego, just based on his writings. (e.g. at one point he declared that he can tell if someone is smart or not just by looking at them)
He actually at one point wrote that he was a reincarnation of the god Pan, so he has/had a very literal god complex, too. It's such a shame that he was the person to interpret hacker culture for those of us in the future, because he's hardly a good lens
I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but that wasn’t meant as a literal “I am the god Pan” — it was figurative, hyperbole. At least, that’s my recollection from when I read it a couple of decades ago.
I've read it more recently, and he did mean it literally. I've cut this together because it's far too long to quote en masse, but the full thing is at [1]
Desperate for something to feed my jones, I snaffled my other sister's
abandoned flute. And wow! I was a natural...immediately better with it than
with the guitar I'd been hacking at for months. [...] This was delightful but
mystifying. All I'd had to do was learn to play a scale, and this amazing river
of music poured forth with barely an effort on my part. It seemed almost as
though my hands and lips had always known what to do, had been waiting for me
to pick up the flute. [...] I got these stunning rushes of pure timeless joy,
when my consciousness seemed to expand outwards from the limits of my skin to
fill the universe and I could no longer tell whether I was playing the music or
the music was playing me. Nor were these effects just going on inside my own
head. [...] I was walking home, idly puzzling over this peculiar incident, and
damn near fell over when I finally got it. That girl had been trying to cope
with a theophany; she had looked at me and seen a god. A particular god. And I
knew, suddenly, with utter shattering certainty, which one it was. And that it
probably was not the first time I had inadvertently triggered such an
experience, and would almost certainly not be the last. [...] Not that I took
any of it seriously as a description of the real world. It was an intellectual
chew-toy, perhaps at best a way of understanding the pathologies that prevented
human beings from living the infinitely more desirable life of reason and
science. Until I realized, finally, belatedly, what had been happening to me.
Until the Great God Pan reached out of my hindbrain and thundered "YOU!". And
his gift is music and his chosen instruments the pipes and flutes. And his, too
the power of joy; magic so strong that when it flowed out of me, even before I
knew what I was doing, it amazed people into awe and incoherence and poetry.
[...] (And, oh, yes. The first time I handled a set of pan-pipes I could play
them. Fluently. Effortlessly. And knew I could before I touched them.)
The https://WhatHaveYouTried.com guy backtracked after a few years in the linked follow-up article, ashamed of giving the geek world another way to gatekeep and tell unworthy people to get lost.
Gemmell made a mistake in assuming the shame and guilt of the people who abused his article. The article is just a tool. We should hold the abusers responsible for their gatekeeping and telling others to get lost.
You know, it just occurred to me that the "How to ask questions" document is targeted as much at hackers and how they should maintain their "standards" than at users who are asking questions. For example, the document has approving examples of "logically impeccable but dismissive" hacker answers; these make more sense as instructions on how a hacker should respond than as something relevant to a user.
I guess my point is that I had read the "How to ask questions" document for decades and viewed it as an objective document, not realizing how arrogant and "gatekeeping" it is.
[1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html