Lol. Thanks for the theatrical rendition. Spot on. 
I think there are plenty of WTH requests that are constructive, and some that haven’t been. If people are frustrated about the way some things work, I think it’s fair for them to ask for those things to change, but if it goes against what other people want from HA it’s only normal they also express their wishes.
Sharing opinions respectfully is important and that isn’t always the case, but there have definitely been a lot of topics that have kept a good tone. Overall since the idea is to get a feel of what people find important to help with prioritization, it is probably also helpful to see where there are strong opinions so they can tread more lightly around such issues.
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There are plenty of people on the forum that weren’t programmers that have learnt and done some pretty cool things.
Personally I think it’s rather the case that some people want to be spoon fed, or asks a question that’s been asked countless times, but they couldn’t bother to search. Volunteers have zero obligation towards others, so no volunteer has to bend to the whims of any other users.
There is one very basic principle that’s important around here: explain your goal and what you’ve done or tried. Sometimes the tool makes solving the problem hard. Sometimes the technology isn’t ripe. Sometimes one is overly ambitious (especially given one’s own skills).
Programmers aren’t programmers because they are programmers: they are programmers, because they can think more abstract, analytical, logical (in the formal sense) and structured. Documentation often seems abstract, because it’s intention isn’t to explain every possible use case. It shows how to use small parts correctly (“this field can have this value”), with some illustrative examples (“use this to turn on a light”). Figuring out how to use the parts to build something bigger is where many get stuck.
When you do home automation, you are programming to some extent, whether you use the UI, NR or something else. Donald Knuth, one of the greatest computer scientists famously doesn’t use computers all that much, but solves problems with pen and paper — which might sound old school, but it works. You don’t solve problems with programming. Programming is merely the translation of the solution. It’s an output of a thought process.
We live in a world of instant gratification where making an effort now seems unreasonable.
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Volunteers have zero obligation towards others, so no volunteer has to bend to the whims of any other users.
All that I can really say here is that this is a real life demonstration of the kind if posts that I was highlighting.
If someone asks a question and doesn’t understand the answer because it’s being given by a much more technically experienced person, and so asks for more help, that’s not really demanding that other people bend to their whim. It’s simply them being new and needing more help.
The thing about be a volunteer is that nobody is forcing them to even respond to the post. They can choose to pass over questions that they don’t want to answer, but some instead choose to make unnecessary posts reminding everyone that they are there and that they are a volunteer.
My philosophy is that when someone is asking for support it’s best to prov8them with support or to say nothing. Getting upset at people for being new does not provide any useful content to the thread and hurries anything that might be helpful to others.
Also, I spoon feeding is a legitimate response for a new user. Everyone has to start somewhere, and some people do better in this kind of environment, it’s called diversity. Different methods are better for different people.
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I’m in complete agree with you on this one, I may have worded it badly, but this is essentially what I was thinking, and a lot of the conflict in the forum comes when a more structured and analytical user comes across a thread from someone who needs a more tutorial based approach and then become ls frustrated when their analytical answers are understood.
It’s a bit like someone trying to explain fractions using numbers to someone who does better with charts and diagrams.
My gripe, and the reason why I made my original post is that the analytical types often feel the need to remonstrate, when the thread might be more productive if it were left for a non analytical person to answer. We’ve got stacks of threads that effects a string of pe8saying that we should read the manual, and the post contain the answers are getting lost.
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Getting upset is unnecessary, but asking them to put in some effort is not unreasonable.
When someone says they can’t understand anything then there is no point in keep going.
That person has already laid the grounds of the discussion and you know there is no point in trying.
And a lot of people do that here.
Look at a lot of the questions, someone asks how can I make this complex automation and someone posts the full automation and sometimes with a rather good explanation.
My challenge is still up for grabs in the other thread. What should the templates be replaced with and how would it look.
And how can you replace a range of numbers to strings in said method.
If you have so much issues with templates then surely you must have some idea on how it should work.
Or should the developers guess, and what if they guess wrong? Is it really too much to ask that you in your WTH thread explains something how the problem should be solved?
The WTH topics are more than not thought through and sometimes with things that is already possible, as an example WTH why is the forecast one single sensor? - Month of “What the heck?!” - Home Assistant Community.
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It’s funny because most of us have been person one and person two at some time or other.
Maybe so, but surely the best was to do this is just to leave the thread. Not to try to make people feel bad for starting it.
Accusing new user of trying to bend other people to their whim is arguably a worse way to give up on someone than simply to leave the thread quietly.
A typical new user thread on this forum often consists of someone asking for help, then another user asking them for log files, then followed by the op asking how to do that, because they’re new.
It’s often the case that the first half dozen posts are just a backwards and forwards like this.
Person 1: I need help with xyz
Person 2: do abc
Person 1: how do I do abc?
Person 2: read the manual
Person 1: I read the manual but got stuck, so I came here looking for help
Person 2: I’m a volunteer, i’m not here to bend to your whim. You should feel bad for posting this thread, you’re not even my real dad, Brad
Quiet quitting is often more productive than arguing that someone needs to read up more on the subject.
Thats like telling a struggling beginner skier “well if you find it hard to ski, then surely you must have some idea on what a better solution would be? Is it really too much to ask for you to present a better design for snow-going sport equipment?”.
Just because someone is challenged by a UI doesn’t not make them a UI designer who could help in improving said UI. Expressing your opinon that something is hard to you does by no means obligate you to have a solution about how to make it easier.
Also improving UX/UI is not done by just implementing direct user feedback, but by writing user jurneys, building mock-ups, doing user testing and design iterations.
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I disagree. Please post a few examples, because this is the second time you say this is how it works here and I can’t say that I have seen this happen once
So everyone says nothing is better? How does that help?
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No… That would be to tell the skier you need to put some effort in and practice more.
Because that is what people has been telling you. But you didn’t want to listen. Only after that did people tell you this is not for you.
And that is what I would have told a skier too. If they don’t what to put some effort in and practice then it’s not for them.
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Well, thats what this forum is all about. Else why bother giving people the possibility to ask stuff, if the default answer is just “RTFM”.
Ported into a forum for German learners conversations here sometimes read like this:
OP: Hello crowd. I’m just at his bar in Berlin and met a super cute girl. Could anyone tell me what “I love you” means in german real quick?
P1: This has been answered countless times.
P2: Here is the Langenscheid dixionary, a link to verb conjugation tables and a book on german Syntaxt.
OP: Uhm… could anyone just tell me the translation please?
P2: You have been given all the information you need to answer your question. What is the Problem?
P3: Kinda hard to help you OP, you din’t even specify if you want the formal or informal translation of “You”. In this context really only the informal one is used, but you should include that when asking stuff like this.
OP: But why won’t anyone just tell me?
P4: What are we, your personal translators? We had a hard time learning that language too. Maybe tone down the entitelment?
OP: Gives up and proceeds to die alone
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I’m not going to post specific examples because singling people out is one of the more toxic things that happens on forums. If I posted examples of something that you said elsewhere on a random thread that you had nothing to do with I’m pretty sure that you would feel like I was bullying or shaming you. So I won’t do it to other people.
Staying quiet helps because an empty thread is more likely to receive a productive answer in the future than a thread filled with arguments. It’s better to hear crickets than arguments.
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Great, so this is becoming personal again. Really don’t see why this is necessary, but you are sorta proving my point about how dicussions on here can become toxic without any need.
Mind you I put in A LOT of effort in the last couple of years and I have come a long way in understanding how HA works - to a large part because of great help i received in this forum. Still doesn’t make me a coder and I’m still struggling with so many things so I still come on here and ask"stupid" questions, because I get stuck with stuff that just seems simple and obvious to others.
Also this is my very first WTH and the reason I wrote it is because i saw how other WTH OPs where being told they are the problem, when they expressed their hartfelt frustration about how HA is challenging to them instead of the community accepting that HA actually IS challenging to a lot of people and that this is a very real experience a lot of people are having and might need improvement.
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I often wonder where the people who get upset about users asking to be spoon fed expect them to go, but maybe Redit?
Documents for one thing, totoriaks and forums for another.
I can only remind you of that you said that you didn’t understand the word/syntax states and how everything is unreadable (not that word specifically, but summarized).
Yes people said this is not for you after this. And to be completely honest, using your analogy of skiers, that would be a skier who doesn’t understand snow.
And then you call it gatekeeping and start a new thread.
I would say you made it personal from the start.
And that’s great.
I have not seen any of your posts but I would gladly help.
Nobody is expecting you to be a coder. But doing the complex things do require either being a coder or someone who can learn by reading others code and figure out the methods.
You can’t do coding without doing coding.
However much you simplify the UI you will not be able to do a TTS command with a variable in the middle without some kind of syntax.
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That was by no means my intention. Sorry you feel that way.
I have nothing against anyone personally on this forum, I just think the commmunity could be a bit more welcoming to non-techie users sometimes. Because it really only takes one or two negative comments to throw newcomers off.
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I would say that works the other way around too.
If someone says they are unwilling to learn and only want to get spoon-feed forever then it’s a red flag for sure.
Trying to understand the word states isn’t that hard and showing your unwillingness to do so kind of segments you.
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I don’t think I have ever seen a scenario like this on the forum.
I think you are mixing 2 different contexts.
- Someone coming to forum asking for help.
- Someone writing a feature request or WTH, because they can’t do something in HA.
Those are completely different scenarios. And while I agree sometimes people are too hostile and unnecessarily defensive, at the same time I think the forum is incredibly welcoming and helpful to people that come here for help. Even if they don’t know much about HA or coding.
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