Friendlyness in the OpenWrt forum

Thanks for bringing that up, I had missed that gem.

I really appreciate and understand all the hard work that many put into this project. Both development but also the forum. Sometime people are stressed, angry, annoyed, hungry etc. and sometime people are just plain lazy and asks instead of spending time reading and learning before askin. It is all part of being human :slight_smile: As mention above, there is sometime a language barrier that causes friction.

Back when this project split to LEDE I asked that forum if there perhaps should be a code of conduct. I seem to recall I did not get very far. https://www.drupal.org/dcoc is an example from another project. We have used it. It is no silver bullet but it serves as a baseline that people should try to follow.

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+1 for the pointer to a similar code of conduct. I'd also recommend the Contributor Covenant. Everyone starts as a noob. Some people inform themselves of the basics before venturing questions. Some dive in without preparation (and some may in fact be trolls). But when I've belittled "daft" questions in the past, on reflection I always feel terrible even if at the time I thought I was in the right / that's something that "everyone" knows.

There is, in fact, guidelines for the forum:
https://forum.openwrt.org/guidelines
And also terms of service:
https://forum.openwrt.org/tos

Though, there is probably room for improvement.

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Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about coherence in the language. I was talking about the variation between the topics brought up and the very basic question asked.

I am not bringing this issue back, but just wanted to clarify that it wasn't about the language.

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thank you @bobafetthotmail for support. I fully agree with you

Can somebody answer this question? Killswitch expection for AppleTV - only LuCI Web Interface I wish that Apple TV traffic not in Wireguard

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Noob or not, please don’t cross-post unrelated things in multiple topics.

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sorry @dibdot
how to bump a topic?

You probably shouldn't

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The question is still unanswered and people dont see it

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how do you know they don't see it. Maybe no one with answer has seen it yet

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  1. go to your topic
  2. click Reply
  3. enter your bump message
  4. Click Reply
  5. topic bumped, done.

Might I suggest the OpenWRT community provide clear and concise answers to ANY question if at all possible. The major things I notice is that if I run a google search for DD-WRT, I find answers quickly with stickies everywhere for common questions. Support means everything to a product. If someone wants to break their stuff, let them. It’s part of the learning process.

The comparison between OpenWrt and DD-WRT is invalid, especially considering the open and flexible nature of OpenWrt and the huge amount of packages available. So while both are available to everybody, I imagine the average OpenWrt user is likely to be more tech-savvy than the average user of DD-WRT.

The forum is here of course, and I believe the is a huge number of topics posted and solved every week, but it's good to keep in mind that people are all volunteers here, so if you think that there is more to be done, please feel free to step in and help.

Also, to be perfectly honest, it's expected that users should do their homework before asking a question because often the question is already answered multiple times, and sometimes the question is more of general network or basic Linux knowledge that can be answered by simple Web search. Noobs are welcome, of course, but they are also expected to do their part, because of they aren't willing to do so then maybe they should find a firmware that's simpler, or just stick to the stock firmware!

I am not sure that these two sentence make sense together. If someone wants to break their stuff then they don't need support for that. Anyway, nobody will prevent you from breaking your stuff, but it makes sense to make use of the collective experience so that you don't repeat the mistakes that others did.

"Collective experience" and community help is probably descriptive of the function of the forum here. After all, it's a community project by people for people (that includes the development, the wiki and the forum), and not a commercial product where there are some people who get paid to answer questions.

To summarise: if you think that more help is needed, be that!

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It's not a matter of supplying the help, but more of a concern that this forum is run by folks with gigantic ego's. Folks who have no people skills. Do you know how to properly cook a fried or scrambled egg without a google search? Do you know the difference between the hammer, anvil, and stirrup in the inner ear? Can you give me at least 5 uses for an oscilloscope? Maybe, Maybe not. I do and I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I learned from watching and asking a famous chef, studied medicine at a young age, but changed my path to follow a career in communications. Any forum exists to exchange knowledge. Be Humble and kind.

The forum isn't "run" by folks. There are, of course, the moderators who handle technical issues, keep things tidy and occasionally when there is a spammer or something like that, but most activities are done by the users. That includes answering questions, giving advices and updating lessons learnt back into the Wiki.

From previous discussions I have seen, people here try to accommodate and be gentle. There is always a chance that miscommunication could happen, but that's just the nature of things. If you think that the folks here don't have people skills, and you have people skills, please feel free to step-in and devote some of your time daily to answering questions on the forum, like some of the regulars here who spend hours of their time to help others--time they could have spent with their families, watching the TV, or even doing some paid work, but they chose to spend helping others for no return other than the love of open-source software and the OpenWrt project.

It's also worth mentioning that this is, after all, an advanced software that is intended for people with some technical knowledge, and whose users, including the regulars here, are likely to be from technical background not a hospitality or sales profession. So it's just unfair to expect a Ritz-class front-disk service or Amazon-like customer service.

Everybody is a volunteer here. If you think that more work needs to be done, please feel free to help. If you are someone asking a basic question because they are just too lazy to search for the answer, please answer them instead of criticising the others for being busy with answering more worthy questions.

I have seen questions on the forum that are not only basic but often are not related to OpenWrt. Nevertheless people try to answer when convenient. But it's important to keep in mind that the forum is about OpenWrt. In fact if you look at the forums and supoort for commercial software packages, even from the major players who change thousands for their license, you will see that if the question isn't related to their software, they just tell you so.

And, again, this is a community project. If you think that all what I am saying is non-sense and that the forum here is as bas as you are picturing it, you can just help to make it better.

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I would say fortunately, why people try to help? they are not paid in money but in self-satisfaction, i.e. ego.

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I think this is relevant to this topic. I am considering this guideline for people on the forum:

Update: Thanks to the commenters: I have edited the advice below to improve the important part...

Answering questions on the forum is an honorable service to the community. However, if you find yourself getting frustrated, remember you can choose which questions to answer.

This works for both sides of the equation, and keeping it in mind decreases the amount of trolling and anger we sometimes see:

  1. For people answering questions: You can certainly ask for clarification, but remember, you don't have an obligation to respond. If the original poster is uncooperative (or they can't figure out how to answer usefully), then you can step away from the conversation with a clear conscience.

    They may flounder, or they may independently learn enough to solve their own problem, or they may decide to provide the requested information. In all cases, the forum remains a friendly place, and you can focus your energies on answering questions from people who do follow your advice.

  2. For people asking questions: You can be assured that your post has been seen. A large number of experts read the subject of every post on the forum. They answer the posts that interest them or where they understand the subject.

    If your question hasn't received a response (or a response that you understand), simply "bumping" the question is unlikely help. It's better to either add more information about what you're seeing, the error message, etc., or ask for clarification on what someone else wrote.

Thoughts on this advice? Would this help with friendliness? Thanks.

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I am not sure this passes the message you want.
The way I read it is that only specific people answer questions in the forum.
It would look better as:

It's everyone's job to answer questions in the forum.

I am not a native speaker, but this "it's not anyone's job" sounds like "it's none of your business" to me, clearly not the message you intended to spread.