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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was just a generic example of how some threads devolve into a backwards and forwards of one person saying that another should do something and the other person asking how to do it, till the thread collapses I to a toxic heap that’s of no help to any future readers.
It was supposed to be satirical, not an accurate representation.
Mostly when it becomes an argument is because the OP has an attitude.
They demand something or refuse to do something that has been kindly asked about.
My point is that there’s a big difference between such situation happening in WTH or Feature Request topic versus a regular help topic. If someone requests help, the reaction from veteran members of the community are not hostile, or at least I haven’t really seen that anywhere.
It’s different in WTH or Feature Request topics, the whole dynamic is different. I agree there should be less hostility in those threads, but it’s not like a newbie comes for help and gets told HA is not for them.
One of the reasons that there are so many duplicate threads is that new users tend to start new threads rather than join obviously toxic ones.
It’s why I used zha as my example. New users tend to pick zha as it looks simpler to install, but when they have problems the default suggestion is that they swap to an alternative way of doing it. Which entails scrapping everything that they’ve done and going over a lot of old ground with a new system that’s harder to set up than the one that they’re already struggling with.
It’s going to computer forum and saying that you cannot install new game on windows and then having someone becoming enraged when you turn down their suggestion of installing Linux.
I’m only talking about regular forum requests. I’ve seen it a lot with new users who have simple problems like not understanding how to increment numbers.
Someone asks for help, but does not understand the instructions, or uses an incorrect way of describing things, and then gets accused of abusing the system and has the volunteer link pled on them.
I a help request, I not a feature one.
This was common back when the Gmail integration was first introduced. It caught a lot of people out because it only allowed text to be sent, not attachment. So there were multiple threads of users asking why they couldn’t use it for things like emailing log files or backups.
People need to understand that conversations in communities goes both ways. Beginners and experts need to get along, and both sides are not infallible.
If you ask a question, be prepared to get an answer you don’t like. If you don’t like the answer, that’s not an invitation to chastise the person answering your question. Just do not reply. Or a simple “Darn, I was hoping for a different answer”.
If you can’t answer a question without getting frustrated with the topic and/or OP, don’t post in the topic. As experts, we need to understand that beginners typically don’t know keywords. Try to avoid saying OMG RTFM, however it is okay to point to a manual.
I understand this isn’t the easiest thing to do, just asking everyone to try. I think it’s fair enough to say that we’ve all gotten caught up in something that went too far. Just know when to walk away and don’t be afraid to flag posts. Moderators will attempt to be impartial even if the flag is against another moderator.
In regards to WTH posts, people need to understand both sides as well.
Home Assistant is jam packed with features. Many WTHs have been made for existing functionality.
It’s OK for people to post “You can already do this with ABC”. Posts like this are allowed and do not invalidate the WTH. WTH creators need to understand this. Many times, you can have a discussion in the WTH, and revise the post later to account for any comments that transpired.
Also, to expand on the solution checkbox, they are set by the person who created the topic. If OP marks a post as a solution, then they believe the WTH has been solved. That does not mean the WTH has been addressed. WTHs are only fully addressed when the topic is closed by a moderator or admin.
I think I am the one looking to speak entity states and variables with TTS from within the gui interface. I do this now on other platforms simply by surrounding the entity name with a special character that indicates the value of the entity should be inserted. When you say “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.” I don’t understand what you mean so I don’t know enough to not be asking for this.
And that is what the template also does {{ states('sensor.temperature') }}.
But since there should be no coding or syntaxes then we can’t use special characters since that too is syntaxes.
I would suggest some caution with the “You can already do this with ABC” replies. I have had several replies to questions with this type of response only to find that ABC doesn’t come within a million miles of doing what I described and has no relation beyond a similiar name or keyword.