asterisk users - Feb 2005 - List tips for new subscribers <--sorry for 2 nd post, missed this.

>This list is for discussions among users of Asterisk, not a getting 
>started hotline for beginners. Beginners learn by reading documentation 
>and examining the sample files included. 
Mmm, I (respectfully) disagree. One of the unstated objectives of mechanisms
like this list is to evangelize the platform. Obviously, we all want it to
do well. You can only do that by creating mindshare. You create mindshare by
winning people over. You win people over in a technical context by helping
them wrap their heads around the concept and implement it. Sometimes, this
involves hand-holding, as I do with my boss, my boss' boss etc every day. 

Look, there are two kinds of people (on the list): One that can deal with
the technical implementation of Asterisk and have no problem with it, and
the other kind, that get fired up about the *concept* but are short of the
chops to make it happen. We ignore the second kind at our own peril (I
actually should have said "you guys" instead of "we" because
I am in-between
the two types). I can see a scenario where if the platform becomes
inaccessible to PHB / noob types because of things like attitude, Asterisk
will be relegated to "also-ran" status with such illustrious company
as the
Amiga, which still has an incredibly vocal minority that insists that Amiga
still r00lz, but nobody listens to them and considers them crackpots who
should Just Get Over It.

We *know* Asterisk is a category-redefining platform. We *know* it is
Insanely Great. But ticking people off with brusque answers and flames will
*not* win the hearts and minds of potential adopters. *1-2

*1 As far as the previous "black box" comment goes (where an
implementor
doesn't want someone to know about the inner workings, so they can charge
$$$), there is a certain truth to that, and, while GPL allows for that, it
is completely contrary to the spirit of the platform and makes the Asterisk
community no better than (insert your favorite telecom player whipping boy
here)

*2 Are you so fussy about how your inbox or whatever is displayed that you
are willing to alienate a potential adopter because he top posts or uses
HTML? Come on you guys, who cares? What if you pissed off the CTO of a
Fortune 500 and he ruled out an Asterisk rollout because he took your flames
personally? (sounds like a stretch, but I find it plausible) You didn't do
too much to help the platform that day, did you?

On February 23, 2005 10:54 am, Colin Anderson wrote:
> Look, there are two kinds of people (on the list): One that can deal with
> the technical implementation of Asterisk and have no problem with it, and
> the other kind, that get fired up about the *concept* but are short of the
> chops to make it happen. We ignore the second kind at our own peril (I
"short of the chops" -- I like that phrase.  :-)
> actually should have said "you guys" instead of "we"
because I am
> in-between the two types). I can see a scenario where if the platform
> becomes inaccessible to PHB / noob types because of things like attitude,
> Asterisk will be relegated to "also-ran" status with such
illustrious
> company as the Amiga, which still has an incredibly vocal minority that
> insists that Amiga still r00lz, but nobody listens to them and considers
> them crackpots who should Just Get Over It.
While I agree with you for the most part, when those "short of the
chops" come
in and request IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE and don't show the slightest bit of 
having done research or trying to figure it out before, I reply with my 
consulting rates.  I'll hand-hold, but I'll charge for it.  

If, however, you show an honest attempt at figuring it out on your own and you 
check your ego at the door, you will no doubt find that I will go out of my 
way to help.  Check the list archives or your local IRC logs for proof.

In short: Embrace the open source ideologies and you will get open source 
help.  Implement open source to short-cut your way to success, and receive an 
invoice.
> *2 Are you so fussy about how your inbox or whatever is displayed that you
> are willing to alienate a potential adopter because he top posts or uses
> HTML? Come on you guys, who cares? What if you pissed off the CTO of a
> Fortune 500 and he ruled out an Asterisk rollout because he took your
> flames personally? (sounds like a stretch, but I find it plausible) You
> didn't do too much to help the platform that day, did you?
I'm pretty tolerant of these things unless they *really* aggravate me (i.e.
a
10-reply thread with no trimming, or font/colour combinations that make my 
eyes bleed.  I generally reply with whatever help I can offer in addition to 
a "You should turn off HTML because..." and/or "you should spend
some time
editing your replies because..." -- Serious re-offenders often just get 
ignored or mocked publically.  If I am having a particularly bad day I might 
jump the re-offender part but that is *very* infrequent and I often apologize 
publically afterward.  We are, after all, all human.

-A.

On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 08:54 -0700, Colin Anderson wrote:
> >This list is for discussions among users of Asterisk, not a getting 
> >started hotline for beginners. Beginners learn by reading documentation
> >and examining the sample files included. 
> 
> Mmm, I (respectfully) disagree. One of the unstated objectives of
mechanisms
> like this list is to evangelize the platform. Obviously, we all want it to
> do well. You can only do that by creating mindshare. You create mindshare
by
> winning people over. You win people over in a technical context by helping
> them wrap their heads around the concept and implement it. Sometimes, this
> involves hand-holding, as I do with my boss, my boss' boss etc every
day.
Why evangelize to those who have already at least put forth the effort
to get here? You also don't increase mindshare here, you do that at your
LUG or other networking levels. 

As far as hand-holding, maybe that is the name of the next mailing list
needed. Noobs aren't to be disrespected but the people who expect to get
their business up and running via handholding and not having to pay for
the consultant can go over to the handholding list and be safely
ignored.

As for what you do with your boss and or any level of management above
you is why you have a job. Your boss is doing exactly what we expect
some users here to do. When it either goes beyond their capacity or
beyond what effort they are willing to put forth, they must pay for the
support. 

I'm sure I'm not the only one that first gages the effort exhibited in
the messages that I actually read. If it appears the person has actually
put forth effort, they get treated very well. The less effort exhibited,
the less I care about the person. Effort is usually exhibited by the
question asked. If it is about a specific detail, the user obviously has
learned enough already to get to asking about a detail. Asking if
asterisk can make coffee, do the laundry, sense the bladder level... No
effort was applied.
> Look, there are two kinds of people (on the list): One that can deal with
> the technical implementation of Asterisk and have no problem with it, and
> the other kind, that get fired up about the *concept* but are short of the
> chops to make it happen. We ignore the second kind at our own peril (I
> actually should have said "you guys" instead of "we"
because I am in-between
> the two types). I can see a scenario where if the platform becomes
> inaccessible to PHB / noob types because of things like attitude, Asterisk
> will be relegated to "also-ran" status with such illustrious
company as the
> Amiga, which still has an incredibly vocal minority that insists that Amiga
> still r00lz, but nobody listens to them and considers them crackpots who
> should Just Get Over It.
As with everything else in life, when there are only 2 options you
probably oversimplified. Take my comments above and apply them to your
thoughts here and you get at least a 3 dimensional graph where people
lie somewhere on the 3 axis. X axis is technical now how, Y axis is
conceptualizers, and the Z axis is the amount of effort willing to be
applied. 

Of course I am sure there are other factors to be added into that as
well.
> We *know* Asterisk is a category-redefining platform. We *know* it is
> Insanely Great. But ticking people off with brusque answers and flames will
> *not* win the hearts and minds of potential adopters. *1-2
> 
> *1 As far as the previous "black box" comment goes (where an
implementor
> doesn't want someone to know about the inner workings, so they can
charge
> $$$), there is a certain truth to that, and, while GPL allows for that, it
> is completely contrary to the spirit of the platform and makes the Asterisk
> community no better than (insert your favorite telecom player whipping boy
> here)
There are many users who don't care about the implementation. That is
part of the reason that people haven't cared about building open
solutions previously. I am guessing, but I doubt most integrators care
much about the internals. They only care about their interface and what
level of stability they can provide. 
> *2 Are you so fussy about how your inbox or whatever is displayed that you
> are willing to alienate a potential adopter because he top posts or uses
> HTML? Come on you guys, who cares? What if you pissed off the CTO of a
> Fortune 500 and he ruled out an Asterisk rollout because he took your
flames
> personally? (sounds like a stretch, but I find it plausible) You didn't
do
> too much to help the platform that day, did you? 
Fortune 500 companies are lemmings. They don't tend to go out on a limb.
It is rare that a fortune 500 made it where they did by being very
innovative. If the CTO of a fortune 500 made it here, he probably is
only doing it for fun. The CTO would  have delegated down about 3 levels
of management before it hit someone who needs to do real work.

As for how one uses email... It is very analogous to speaking etiquette.
You where taught not to interupt while another is speaking, you are
taught to enunciate, and most are reminded not to ramble. If someone
comes up to you and doesn't follow those rules, you might well brush
them aside and work your way on to something else. Why is email any
different? There are plenty of arguments against HTML in email for
99.999% of email. If you haven't figured out the superiority of replying
inline with quoted messages, your about equivalent to the rambling
speaker. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch@basesys.com>

2 parts, 1 to Andrew, 1 to Mr Critchfield:

Andrew's part follows:
>If I am having a particularly bad day I might 
>jump the re-offender part but that is *very* infrequent and I often
apologize 
>publically afterward.  We are, after all, all human.
First of all, thanks for the well-reasoned response. I think you hit on the
key phrase there, "We are, after all, human". There are a couple of
different aspects to this:

1. There is an element of sour grapes on behalf of noobs who get offended by
flames and take it personally, as evidenced by the bitching, some justified,
some not. Taking things personally is a mistake that *everyone* has to work
through, and my personal epiphany was realized around the time that I became
a BBS junkie on my 1040ST with a 300bps acoustic coupler. That was almost 20
years ago. Some people take a bit longer than that. (after all, they are
only human) So, try to give them leeway. There are other ways to drive your
point home instead of flaming. (not you, specifically, but I have seen it
and have had it pointed at me, as well) 

LESSON FOR NOOB: Don't take it personally. Ask for help in the fashion that
you would be asked. Make sure you have Linux 101 under your belt. 

2. The guy who flames (I was going to say "flamer" but, holy crap, can
you
imagine the jokes) again, is only human, and maybe he is having a bad day,
his dog died, etc. You never know. Sometimes he may well just be a jerk.
Guys who flame have to come to the realization that there is give and take.
Their part in subscribing to this list is to help, if they choose. You can't
help by immediately pouncing on the guy for not inline-posting, by saying
"Google for it you idiot" etc. I understand the argument about not
researching, but how does the poster convey whether they have done so or
not? You don't know. Sometimes, I see a guy get flamed simply because
he's
not a native english speaker, and he can't correctly articulate what he is
asking for. 

LESSON FOR PRO: Leave your ego at the door. Realize that, yes, people ask
shortcut questions and there are some VC types on the list that want the $$$
but don't want to do the work. Ignore them. Carry on. When you flame, all
you do is create chaos, bitching and ill-will. Remember, you are doing this
because you love it and you care. If you hate -users (and users in general),
why are you on the list? The word USERS is an INCLUSIVE term, not EXCLUSIVE.


Mr. Critchfield's part:

First of all, that was an outstanding counterpoint you posted. Time and time
again, you show that you are the smartest person on the list. I'm not trying
to kiss your ass (sounds like it though!), it's pretty evident that you are.
You've also doled out your fair share of flames.
>Why evangelize to those who have already at least put forth the effort
>to get here? You also don't increase mindshare here, you do that at your
>LUG or other networking levels. 
It's naive to think that this list isn't monitored by Cisco or Nortel or
whatever VoIP player/carrier/ILEC/CLEC is the flavor of the month. Don't you
think that it's important that the list comes across as serious, with a
focus, and committed? At best, it *may* introduce Asterisk mindshare into
these organizations, if only to improve their own product offerings, and at
worst, it will destroy Asterisk credibility in those organizations because
of apparent infighting.
>Fortune 500 companies are lemmings. They don't tend to go out on a limb.
>It is rare that a fortune 500 made it where they did by being very
>innovative. If the CTO of a fortune 500 made it here, he probably is
>only doing it for fun. The CTO would  have delegated down about 3 levels
>of management before it hit someone who needs to do real work.
So that third level manager who does the work gets flamed on the list, and
exactly the same thing happens - he says to his CTO: "Asterisk is a joke,
all they do it bitch about HTML emails on the list" and the platform missed
that opportunity for adoption. Quite true about Fortune 500 and lemmings,
but let's say, .5% of them are the ones that are innovators. That's 25
*huge* installs and will answer another noob question on the list: "Where
are the big Asterisk installs?"

>The CTO is highly unlikely to know or care about the low level technology
>decisions. It isn't something that bubbles up to his level or pay
>grade. 
Unless it's presented to him as a means of doing something faster, better,
more cheaply, better interop etc. Isn't that the value proposition in
Asterisk? Maybe not to the CTO, but the CTO's underling, the second level
manager. Presumably, this guy would have the CTO's ear.

I read an article about CN Rail in Canada which is kind of like Amtrack in
the US. They had Linux trickle in as replacements for DNS servers running
Solaris, I think. Something they paid big bucks for. It was goofy, because
BIND is BIND, right? The biggest resistance was convincing the suits that
this Linux thing wasn't a scam and offered the same featureset and
reliability that Solaris did. Eventually what happened is that the suits
looked around and found out that BIND-Linux was the preferred means of DNS
for the Net, and all of a sudden it was legitimized for them. They started
out with DNS, and eventually they migrated wholesale to Linux. 

I see the same thing in the Asterisk context. Mark builds a killer platform.
The geeks go into convulsions of ectasy. They evangelize. The userbase
builds. Slashdot lusers pester you with questions. You answer, they figure
out sip.conf, and then they evangelize. More lusers come along and pester.
You answer, with the patience of Job, then they evengelize. Eventually, a
mainstream effect comes into play, and the platform starts to get mainstream
acceptance. Hopefully, CTO of XYZ sees an article in the Wall Street Journal
(more legitimate than Wired? Depends.) about this thing, and calls up his
batman and says "Find out about this thing" and then at that point
Mark can
finally afford his hot tub. (whatever happened to that anyway?)

Sorry about the math. Duh.