From: Jeremy Wells <jwells@...>
Date: 2006-12-19T21:33:26+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] where have all the experienced users gone?

Eric Hodel wrote:
> On Dec 18, 2006, at 18:50, Trans wrote:
>
>> seems like there's been a steady drop off in experienced ruby users on
>> the list. is it me or has there really been some sort of migration
>> away?
>
> In the back-channels I've heard the following reasons for why 
> long-time readers of ruby-talk cut back:
>
> a) signal:noise ratio too low.
> b) belligerent newbies.
>
I think that it's not just newbies, but newbies asking insensible 
questions, normally involving excel. There's also a lot of postings 
along the lines of "I've written this code, can you write it better for 
me" which is fair enough for an interesting bit of code, but normally 
the response should be, without sounding rude, "read the documentation 
or buy a ruby book". Newbies want answers often before working out what 
the question should be. And I'd consider myself a newbie on the way to 
intermedion, but I'd never post a question like "ruby.exe doesn't work 
on my windows xp! tell me what to do!?", or from a couple of pages down 
the list "I need to save an Excel Spreadsheet with Ruby. I used the Save 
AND SaveAs methods..." (What is it with excel? I've got no particular 
problem with it, but it seems to be a magnet for the ignorant).

Jeremy