WTH month asks for suggestions and issues with HA core, especially if the user is unsure how to open an issue on GitHub. If the issue can be easily solved by helping the poster to find or understand how to do something, then why not help them?
Even if they are grateful and ask for their WTH to be closed we generally only mark a post as a solution instead. That way the developers still get to see what people are needing help with when they review the full month of submissions (I do not envy them that task). And discussion can continue for the rest of the month if needed, e.g. someone may have a very similar problem but not like the answer given.
Usually these types of responses are made out of frustration with the person asking the questions. Often when the person seems to be unable to see their own role in the problem and solution, and refuting any attempt to help them see this.
Like for example when someone says something is too hard, then gets an example and a link to where to read more, but then seemingly don’t even make an effort to try to understand, just keep saying it’s too hard.
I feel like this is kind of a natural byproduct to allowing other people to comment on the WTH … there are some requests that I’ll chime in on and be like:
-“hey, you can already do this using ____”
-For another, I was like “I didn’t even know this was something that was bothering me!”
BUT for others I’ve written out a lot and then deleted it because I felt it would be against the spirit of the WTH, but, I’ve wanted to tell people that I really dislike their suggested change very much because I like the way it is currently or the way it is currently makes sense, but their solution wouldn’t (to me). I feel like a lot of the pushback is from people that are like that, they like the way it is currently or don’t see a way to change it in a way that would keep existing users that like it as-is and new users that don’t both happy.
For myself, I just don’t reply in these threads unless it’s constructive (you can already do that, here’s a workaround that I’ve been using, etc…) because I feel the whole point of WTH is to show where the friction points are … you may not be able to fix them all (and may actively reject some of them as being something that will ever be implemented), but knowing what they are is still beneficial, but I think others feel the need to defend rather than just explain why or actually help (or their explain comes off too defensive).
Some of the things I’ve seen though have been wild!
But, I’m sure my way of doing things are making others scratch their heads and be like … wtf, why wouldn’t he just ______ -or- why would he use Node-Red? -or- why would he use ProxMox with HAOS rather than just run the dockers‽, etc… We all work differently and for the most part HA works with us however we want to do things … occasionally though, we find people want to do it a different way that’s really no worse than the way we do it, but, just different.
OP is spot on. It’s probably a reflection of the rot in society in general, but there’s WAY too much “with us or against us” going on, and WTH no longer seems constructive. IMHO.
My favorite is any comment to the effect of “we’re all volunteers, we don’t owe anything”.
This seems to be the standard response from anyone who tries to get you to do something in a very specific way, and then gets upset that you’ve taken someone else’s suggestion.
This also seems to come up quite a bit when one person is trying to fix a problem rather than trying to dump everything that you’ve done and to use an alternative technology or method.
I must have seen this a hundred times in threads asking about a problem with Zigbee devices
Person 1: I’m having some trouble with ZHA …
Person 2: ZHA, you want to stop what you’re doing right now and use Zigbee2Mqtt
Person 1: I’ve got it 99% finished, but I just need to bring it over the line with this one bit …
Person 2: This is a volunteer forum, we’re volunteers, we don’t owe you anything, does this look like the Apple store to you?
Person 3: I hate it when people treat use like slaves, we’re using our own free time for this
Person 4: Yeah, we’re not being paid to help you, show some respect
Person 5: You’ve put a type in the second line, the code you found online is in American English so there isn’t a U in that bit
Person 1: OK, great, that’s all done
Person 2: How very dare you, we’ve not here to serve you.
Consider this to be an artistic rendition of how it felt to be part of that thread, rather than the actual words used.
There is however a section of one of the FAQ\guides that states that that this forum is run by volunteers, and not a paid technical support site, so users shouldn’t treat other people as staff who owe an answer to every question that gets ask.
Sadly, people often link back to it when they feel that their contributions are being ignored, rather than when people are demanding answers from them.
It shows up a lot when there are competing ways of doing the same thing, such as ZHA and Z2Mqtt. Someone will ask how to solve a problem that they have using one of them, and someone else will write a post on how to solve it with the other, and then get upset when the OP engages with people proffering a ZHA solution.
There’s also a whole lot of problems with people asking questions, and then getting people responding that they should read the help documents instead of asking questions. Then responding with the “we’re volunteers” link when asked if they could help with something in the documents that the OP doens’t understand.
I think that it’s mostly a conflict between old school coders who understand the technical aspects of HA and do everything in YAML, and people who just want to turn the lights down when the TV is turned on using the GUI.
There’s definitely two camps, and the old school coders often don’t have much patience for people who are just coming off of phone apps, and don’t yet understand the more complex aspects of HA.
Yeah. After posting, I also questioned whether the post should have been “WTH is the point of WTH?”. Because either people have an actual question about existing features, or a question it is a feature request. Giving people a space to just rant about stuff that they are frustrated about is a guarantee for the YAML-veterans getting offended and ranting back. It is not constructive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
