Fallen Tech Blog

While sifting through some mailing list posts yesturday I came across a post on the jadmin mailing list asking for assistance with setting up a Jabber server (see http://www.jabber.org/ for more information).

What really got me was the way he was asking for help. People like this guy really aggravate and confuse me.

Follow up:

The server he was setting up was Jabberd2. It's a free, open source server available for anyone wanting to run a Jabber server of their own.

The jadmin mailing list, just like most other mailing lists, exists purely to help people with issues they may have. It is community driven - members of the mailing list help other members however they can. This sort of free help from people on these lists always provide a warm fussy feeling inside for me.

This guy, calling himself only "Brynet", asked a fairly acceptable question. He provided a copy of his logs and mentioned he didn't want to use alternative servers.

He got a few suggestions and was asked by two people why he didn't want to use one of the alternatives. His reply to the first was somewhat curt if not even harsh. He explained why he didn't want to use the alternative (which is of course acceptable) but he finished his reply with "I've reported the error above. and I await a solution."

This I thought was not very polite but his next reply was extremely rude: "Please someone will qualified support skills, read my original request and respond with instructions. Either a patch for the resolver/router/s2c/c2s/jabberd program or with a more informative way on solving my problem. =\ thanks again..."

He also stated that he finds it odd that a jabberd mailing list is recommending another jabber server. This was just a misunderstanding on his part as the list is for ALL jabber servers, not just jabberd2.

Someone replied, explaining this to him, telling him that it was for ALL jabber servers. He really started to become rude then, claiming "All I've tried to do is get some support, clearly the problem I've found is not documented and I was searching for help, first thing I got from this place was 'Disrespect' and I think the people who operate this mailing list should think of a restructure plan. This mailing list was on the bottom of jabberd2 website - sorry if I thought this was there service only, clearly I'm desperate for help, I'm aware of the alternatives but I refuse to switch over because of this snag. Please help."

While I fully understand his excitement and impatience as he is trying to get something going and can't, but to be rude like this is just unnecessary. Fair enough if you were paying a $20,000 per year support fee but this is a public, community supported mailing list for a piece of FREE, open source software!

A few more people provided him with some help, none that ended with success for him so he asked again "Please if anyone on OpenBSD has had this error and knows a work around, Speak up please!"

After a day, he posted "Hello, I managed to patch the resolver myself its working 100% now.. thanks Can someone tell me how to unsubscribe to the list".

Naturally, someone on the list then requested he provide information about his fix to the list, stating "Did you inform the dev guys about your patch? You could also send it to this list, tell us what you did, it'll surely be of use for the general population :)" They also provided him with information on how to unsubscribe.

His final reply to the list was "Thanks for the unsubscribe info... and as for the patch, sorry not gonna happen ;)"

Reading this final post, fills me with rage. This guy (who doesn't provide any information on who he is - luckily for him) comes onto a public mailing list, demands help for a free product. Obviously anyone who may have come across the problem before will help him as that is how a mailing list works. Then, when he finds the solution himself, he is unwilling to share it with everyone else!

This sort of behavior is becoming more and more common it seems and I have no understanding how these peoples mind operates. It's as if they believe that they are somehow entitled to everyone elses time and effort just because they are "special".