[Liverpool] Advocacy (was: Re: Multi-Boot Query)

[Dan Lynch]

Thanks Bob, that made interesting reading and I think those are good general
points to think about. I've made the mistake of saying things I shouldn't
have in the past and I'm sure I will again in future, who hasn't? I think we
should try to be courteous to people in our initial response though even if
we don't think their question is appropriate for our group. It's counter
productive to bite people's heads off and really damages us more than
anything else. Though as I said, I'm not claiming to be holier than thou
here, I've made the mistake too. If someone comes on ranting about Windows
or whatever ekse and telling us our solutions are crap, then by all means
boot them. Just don't respond to an honest and polite question with vitriol.
We can say "Sorry, that's not the sort of question for this group. You'll
have to try somewhere else" and be done with it. I think that will really
help our reputation as a group. I don't want to think people will be scared
to approach us in case we attack them. That's my only worry. In the recent
Small Steps sessions at FACT it turned out that a lot of folks said they'd
be scared to approach a LUG (or similar group) in case they were ridiculed
for not knowing about something or met with a hostile attitude. This sounds
like elitism to me or at least the perception of it in our camp by the
general public. I'd like to think we can avoid that in our group but I'm
only 1 member and this is just my opinion. If others feel differently then I
respect that.

Since I was involved in the original incident I should say that I don't
think we need to blow this out of proportion. That was never my intention. I
agreed with the overall sentimants of Vladimir's post, I just thought the
tone was a little off and I reacted to try and give some balance for the
original poster, who was making their first post to the list I think.
They've probably left now which is a shame but it's not a big deal, so we
don't need to put anyone's nose out of joint over it. Just try to think
about it in future perhaps if we can :)

Dan


On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Bob Ham <rah at bash.sh> wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-03-19 at 20:33 +0000, Vladimir wrote:
>
> > cruel responce? cruel it might be, but it's definitely is not
> > 'politicaly correct' - and never was intended to be such!
>
> This thread was discussed at yesterdays's LUG meeting.  Having now gone
> through the thread and its children, as a postscript I thought it might
> be worth pointing to the Advocacy HOWTO:
>
> http://www.datasync.com/~rogerspl/Advocacy-HOWTO-6.html<http://www.datasync.com/%7Erogerspl/Advocacy-HOWTO-6.html>
>
>
> Bob
>
> --
> Bob Ham <rah at bash.sh>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Liverpool mailing list
> Liverpool at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/liverpool
>
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