I have a question to ask you all, especially all you new & fresh litestep users.

IS THE LS-COMMUNITY TREATING ALL YOU NEW GUYS & GALS WITH RESPECT???

The reason I'm asking is because it often seems (reading replies on theese forums) like if your a newbie at ls asking for help with something obvious, you almost certanly get some reply telling you how stupid you are not beeing able to find the solution yourself. Is it just me or shouldn't we all welcome new users to this community. How on earth is LS going to grow if there's no people (other than the bunch of guys whos always been there) interested in using litestep.
I know most of you out there treat people with respect but some don't and just want to know if others find this a problem. If it is, maybe there's a solution for it. Maybe there could be a newbie thread here on ls.net where only some people , lets call them the ls support team, could answer questions from new users. It's just an idea.

well said :)
we should be frendlier to noobs (as i think i'm a noob too ;)
but i understand that when people ask the same questions every day not bothering to have a look at the news page or earlier posts it becomes a little frustrating.
good thing is that devilboi and his team have upgraded the forums, so now there can be "sticky" threads. let's hope this will prevent further noob vs veteran bloodsheds ;)

I don't think we make fun of the nubs, it's just the ignorant ones.

If they say "I accidenly did this and now I'm not sure what to do" then we help them and are nice.

If they say "Litestep fux0red my comp and Litestep is gay so I deleted the Litestep directory and now my junk ain't workin, help me or i will hurt you" then we make fun of them.

mr white's correct (for the most part).
most newbies (of which I still consider myself one, even though I've been using LS for about a year), I'm polite to when responding to their questions in the forums. however, it's the others, (lets just call them jackasses)who messed up their own PC through sheer incompotence, and expect us to help them fix their mistakes, and then respond with anger at LS for destroying their PC's; well, we're not quite so polite with them, let's just leave it at that.
however, there's also the newbie's who ask question after question, never learning, just expecting us to adjust their themes, and fix all their problems. We eventually get fed up with them, and start being not so nice.

Newbies are welcome, of course.
But if they wish to do more than install Litestep and switch between themes, they need to read the docs.
Then, we will be pleased to answer questions like: "I want to do this or that but I don't know how to"
If we know that the information could easily be found in the docs, then we just say: "You don't need anyone's help to know that. Come back later"
Best regards

You are all right I suppose, and I agree that some people are jackasses. But as you point out it's very irritating going through the same thing over and over again and there's a chanse that that people might get treated bad by us. Whether this is something we want or not I think it's very troublesome because every time we respond in such a way chanses are we, so to say, loose a community member and that is never good.
The meaning of this thread is not to strike down on everybody that deliberatly or not treats people with more or less disrespect, but to try to come up with a solution to this.
Now there are one major cause to this situation in my opinion, and that is that the ls docs are somewhat outdated. There are several reasons to this as Devilboi has pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago. One is that the docs are writen for the core ls and not indiebuilds, but who doesn't use indie nowadays.
So an updated documentation might do the trick. Now if anybody has any other ideas then thats what I would like to see in this thread. After all we all want to make litestep more user friendly now don't we.

I know many of you consider me to be a jackass because I am less prone to help users with information that can be easily located. I don't mind...

As for the docs...yes they are slightly outdated since they only cover official dev builds, since versioning with Indie would have been a pain. I have asked a couple people to help me out with updating the doc format so that when .24.7 is released the docs will be current. Anyone who knows PHP and XML well can email me and I will be more than happy to get the help on the task. If any of the doc team members are out there e-mail me so I know who is willing to work on the docs again.

what it comes down to is... RTFM. most of the newbies open up a theme, get an error and automatically ask for help without using common sense.

for instance:

1) you get an error box.

2) look at the error box (read the message)

3) locate the module that it is referencing, and the line where the error occurs.

4) fix it by looking at the included documentation.

seriously, most of the questions can be answered in the lsdocs that come with the installer, it's really well written and straightforward. it's a matter of being lazy or not lazy... that's it.

This thread is not going down the path I want it to, so i'll just give up on this. It's just becoming another great example of what I'm talking about.

maybe it's an example of what isn't possible. almost every community on the internet has this kind of problem: people who are brand new to the scene and want people to "catch them up" on everything that has happened and how everything works.

the very fact that people are lazy and don't want to do any reading/searching/looking for themselves anymore and people who are established in the scene or know what they are talking about are tired of holding the hand of every person who can't help themself.

i'm more than happy to help out newbies; give them tips on how to best go about things, tell them why they are getting a certain error, direct them to learning resources (tutorials, etc) and give them help on more advanced techniques that may not be covered in documentation. i will not, however, tell them exactly how to setup a module from scratch, build their theme for them, or tell them how to do every little thing when it is obvious they did no research for themself.

i'm very new to litestep (only a little over a year) and when i first started using it, i was dumbfounded and frustrated. i even made the mistake of posting some of the same dumb questions i now disdain. at the same time, i can't blame people for the responses they gave me because i didn't try to help myself. i went out, got some tutorials, read some documents, and learned how to use the basics of litestep on my own and it was much more gratifying than having someone tell me how to do it.

i suggest other users new to litestep do the same. go and look for the information and see if you can get it to work with your own two hands (or set of digits in this case). it will feel so much better to debug the config of a module yourself and have it work the way you want it to (not to mention understand how the module operates) than having someone right the code for you and send it to you.

This whole thing can be related to just about anything on the internet of late..I don't really have a problem helping people but at the same time, when I was new I didn't expect people to help me, why do the new ppl now? I guess I just dont understand..

I remember when I installed the OLD litestep... like, last years... nothing like the current OTS install or similar installers. I had to learn the whole step.rc thing all by myself. I dont know what the fuss is but it just baffles me why anyone really needs help with anything unless there messing with theme creation or modules. Sorry Milkjugs but no love here :P. LiteStep practically runs itself.

I will tell you all a little story from real life. I'm studying electronics at university at the moment. Electronics have been my hobby for as long as i can remember, so this is obviosly not very hard for me. For this reason people often come to me for help and i try to help them out as good as i can. Now i can admit that sometimes it can be frustrating trying to explain things that, in my opinion, are obvious. And it happends a lot. Does this mean that all of them are stupid? No!! Some people have just have it in there blood and others don't.
Litestep is at a point where it can be installed and used by anyone, and still there are issues with it that can't be solved with the knowledge of ordinary people (no i don't find us normal). Now we can keep blameing people of being stupid or we can make litestep more easy to use. So,
IF YOU JUST WANT TO TELL THE WORLD HOW TIRED YOU ARE OF NOOBS, DONT EVEN BOTHER!!! This thread has had enough of that.
For the last time. What I would like to hear are good ideas as to how to make litestep more user friendly. Things like: a FAQ section, a special newbie section, a wallpaper in the installer theme with information on where to look for help if something goes wrong, a litestep support team (yes i can sign up for that). Things that makes these stupid questions go away from the forums. I think we would all benefit from that.
AND IF ANY NEW USER READS THIS, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK, IT FOR YOU IM DOING THIS AND IT'S YOUR OPINION I WANT!

I think you are right Milk and as others have said, it's a problem with many internet communities. Look at the Linux community. There are many there that argue that Linux should remain difficult to use, just so they can keep it all to themselves. It's not a good phenomenon. LiteSTEP has gotten better and easier to use but it's a lot like Linux in that it's not quite easy enough to use as a regular Windows system.

What can be done about it? Nothing in my opinion as many people believe it to be their god given right to be an asshole. Unless society in general becomes more polite and generous (fat chance), this will always be a problem.

<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=litestep+faq">A FAQ section.</a>

Although for some reason lsdocs.shellfront.org and lsfaq.shellfront.org don't seem to be responding.

Nice!! Now if we could only have one here. This is after all the most obvious place for people to look. Lets see what the future brings.

milk, that's why i wrote the newbie's tutorial for LS on my site (www.pixelhated.org) but ya know, even when there are tutorials and faqs all over the place, people will still ask the same questions. i have had over a dozen people message me on aim, msn, and irc telling me how it helped them and that makes me feel so great but there are still going to be the people who just can't help themselves out and do some reading and researching.

the community can do whatever amount of help we want to help out newbies (and i think we should as a community) but the fact that people just don't want to help themselves is really what gets annoying, and it's not just in the litestep community or on the internet where you find this, it's a universal phenomenon.

Milk - LSnet is a themes site and always has been. In the future I hope to bring in a help section but we have more pressing issues to work on. If anyone knows XML and PHP I would be more than willing to take the help, but right now I do not have the manpower to spend on it.

*blink* http://www.litestep.net/index.php?section=3

oh my, where did that come from? Look at all the fun resources there! *slap my knee* and say: Gee Ma, who woulda thunk it?!

Oh, and a lot of people can exhale a lot of air saying how things should or shouldn't be. It is the poeple who go away and *do* something, then come back and present what they have done, that make the difference. For good or bad. And yes, it is always a smart thing to get input from others, so as to be more efficient in achieving your goal.

The other common pitfall is becoming so emotional about it, because you idealize some larger than life values onto a software program and its 'community', instead of realizing that it is what it is. So, if you see a need, fullfil it; don't try to come in and change things.

Do I wax philosophical?

Enjoy :)

Milkman: For starters I never said anything about newbies, and whatever help you needed you could have found on quite a few sites. And no, I dont understand how you or anyone could need help. The damn thing runs smooth... however now that you mention it I hate whiners. Boo fucking hoo. No one wants to help you, and why would they? And I am proud I am a asshole.... nothin' wrong there? Gotta love the boo-hoo... haha. And for the future, n00bs deserve more respect than you right now... all I see is some spaz goin' psycho whining about how lonely he is.

I am proud of beeing helpful and if anyone need that help let me know. Time to leave this miserable place.

Hey, go or leave... Im not gonna beg on my knees for you to stay, Im just saying the only attitude I ever saw was yours. And there were places you could have gone first for help, and why did you complain about attitude? Why didnt you just say what the damn problem was? As for miserable... sorry, that goes to you and you alone.

Ok...I can see that this is going to turn into the standard LS Mailing List Flame Fest. Milk had a point and I see where he wanted to go with it and it has not gone that way and LS users have gone back to their normal ranting so I am closing this thread. This is to be a peaceful site where all LS users are welcomed with open arms, until they break that peace.