[d0ugal]

After trying Sway recently I read a bunch of github issues when debugging. I was disappointed to find many the comments toxic.

I’ll stick with i3 and probably look for something different in the future.

The examples that were easy to find again; https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/1207#issuecomment-2984...

https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/829#issuecomment-32683...

[dkersten]

Ugh I also find that really offputting. Worse still is it’s the same guy behind SourceHut. Now I need to think about whether I want to continue to use that since if I need help the last thing I want to hear is RTFM. I always do but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss things and need a pointer :(

[MayeulC]

To be frank, drew answered me RTFM once regarding one of my sway questions. I found the answer valid, because I couldn't find the manual before. As sad as it is, many projects do not ship a man page, which makes it very difficult to find documentation.

Sway has quality man pages, and I very rarely have to find someone else in a chat room or fire up the web browser to find answers. I can understand the devs' frustration: they spent a lot of time writing those up, so have people use them.

Give someone an answer, you'll help him for the day. Show him the man, you'll help him for life :)

[dijit]

idk, those examples seem justified. The second one was someone ressurecting an old issue with a request for config information that was _in the issue_.

RTFM is sometimes a valid response, and if you're having an issue finding the documentation then that's a bug.

[onli]

RTFM is never a valid response. At the very least you point the user to the specific section of the manual.

It's this philosophy that made the ubuntu support forums the most agreeable (and pretty much most popular), at least for a while. You can RTFM people, but then you show that you hate your users, and they will leave.

Not only the people asking, but also others reading it. Like this example shows very well. This bad comment not only made d0ugal search for a different project, but also made sure I won't use it, and worsened my opinion of the author considerably.

[mortdeus]

RTFM is always a valid response when you are dealing with a lazy, spoiled society that would rather just call tech support and bother somebody who is sitting on the other side shifting through a stack of manuals in from of them that comes with the product...

What surprises me are people who have the patience to wait for somebody else to tell them why their app broke, when it's much quicker dealing with problem just by going straight to the source. (pun intended)