Dear users,
i've updated the Wiki's info section about how
to access and use the Psychtoolbox forum with
more useful tips on how to get information on PTB,
and how to pose effective questions that are
more likely to get quick and effective responses,
as opposed to silence.
The updated Wiki pages:
<http://psychtoolbox.org/wikka.php?wakka=PsychtoolboxForum>
<http://psychtoolbox.org/wikka.php?wakka=BugReports>
These pages also refer to two external documents about
effective bug reporting and "How to ask questions
the smart way". These are referenced by many
technical support forums for good reasons.
It may take newbies a couple of minutes to read,
but in the long run it will save you and your
helpful colleagues hours or days of time in
waiting for a response, if any...
"Howto submit good bug reports:"
<http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html>
"How to Ask Questions The Smart Way":
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
Many of you pose intelligent questions and submit
good bug reports. It is totally understandable that new
users of the forum or PTB-3 will need some practice
in learning how to handle the toolbox and how to
pose effective questions on the forum. Everybody
started as a beginner sometime and needed some
help to get started, nothing wrong with that.
However, given the large influx of new users,it is no longer
possible (at least not for me) to respond to questions
over and over again that have been answered
multiple times on the forum, on the Wiki or in
PTBs PsychDocumentation or PsychDemos folder.
That's not time spend effectively.
Therefore i ask new users to read and obey
the basic guidelines on our Wiki.
I can only speak for myself, but in the future i'll
mostly ignore questions where i know that the
same question has been recently answered repeatedly
on the forum or in other easily accessible places,
or where i can see that somebody didn't do even
the basic homework of reading the guidelines,
checking the Wiki, looking at the provided demo
code or actually *reading* error messages and tips
that PTB outputs in response to some problem
*before* copy-pasting that output into forum
posts.
We know that our documentation is lagging behind
the available features of PTB-3 and will continue
to do so. Our "manpower" is pretty limited, so
unless more volunteers enter the project, this
won't change.
That's why we ask people to contribute
example code and documentation to the Wiki. If
you got a helpful response to a question on the
forum, please take a few minutes and try to put
the response into proper sections of our Wiki,
maybe after a bit of cleaning and reformatting.
Its not difficult and it only takes a few minutes.
Thanks for your understanding,
-mario
i've updated the Wiki's info section about how
to access and use the Psychtoolbox forum with
more useful tips on how to get information on PTB,
and how to pose effective questions that are
more likely to get quick and effective responses,
as opposed to silence.
The updated Wiki pages:
<http://psychtoolbox.org/wikka.php?wakka=PsychtoolboxForum>
<http://psychtoolbox.org/wikka.php?wakka=BugReports>
These pages also refer to two external documents about
effective bug reporting and "How to ask questions
the smart way". These are referenced by many
technical support forums for good reasons.
It may take newbies a couple of minutes to read,
but in the long run it will save you and your
helpful colleagues hours or days of time in
waiting for a response, if any...
"Howto submit good bug reports:"
<http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html>
"How to Ask Questions The Smart Way":
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
Many of you pose intelligent questions and submit
good bug reports. It is totally understandable that new
users of the forum or PTB-3 will need some practice
in learning how to handle the toolbox and how to
pose effective questions on the forum. Everybody
started as a beginner sometime and needed some
help to get started, nothing wrong with that.
However, given the large influx of new users,it is no longer
possible (at least not for me) to respond to questions
over and over again that have been answered
multiple times on the forum, on the Wiki or in
PTBs PsychDocumentation or PsychDemos folder.
That's not time spend effectively.
Therefore i ask new users to read and obey
the basic guidelines on our Wiki.
I can only speak for myself, but in the future i'll
mostly ignore questions where i know that the
same question has been recently answered repeatedly
on the forum or in other easily accessible places,
or where i can see that somebody didn't do even
the basic homework of reading the guidelines,
checking the Wiki, looking at the provided demo
code or actually *reading* error messages and tips
that PTB outputs in response to some problem
*before* copy-pasting that output into forum
posts.
We know that our documentation is lagging behind
the available features of PTB-3 and will continue
to do so. Our "manpower" is pretty limited, so
unless more volunteers enter the project, this
won't change.
That's why we ask people to contribute
example code and documentation to the Wiki. If
you got a helpful response to a question on the
forum, please take a few minutes and try to put
the response into proper sections of our Wiki,
maybe after a bit of cleaning and reformatting.
Its not difficult and it only takes a few minutes.
Thanks for your understanding,
-mario