Forum Guidelines Remainder

[Ale Martinez]

Golden Cheetah User Forum

Read the Frequently Asked Questions before posting

New users should also read the Wiki User Guide

Tutorials for beginners are on the GoldenCheetah website

We are making an effort to keep FAQs and Wiki updated, so please, take a look at them before posting, searching the forum it is also a good idea.

If you find an error or missing item in the wiki, please report or better yet, directly fix it if you are sure, the wiki is open to contributions.

Thanks!

[Ale Martinez]

Just to bump this and to add a couple of recommendations:

1. If you have a question or want to discuss a feature or GC behavior, please search the forum before to start a new thread, it is highly likely the issue has been discussed before and it is better not to start from scratch each time, you may even find your question already answered.
   
2. Keep threads focused, don’t change the subject since it is not polite to the OP and, even if you started the thread, it makes hard to do 1) effectively.
   

Thanks for your collaboration.

[Ale Martinez]

From https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/help-vampire/info

The Help Vampire problem is the idea that some users will continually ask the same tired questions in the hope that someone else will do their work for them, irrespective of whether the same question has already been asked or whether they could easily find the solution elsewhere.

A Spotter's Guide

Please, don’t be a Help Vampire.

To feed Help Vampires doesn’t seem to work either, I will stop doing it.

[Ale Martinez]

I am resurrecting this thread due to 6 events in the last month following basically the same pattern:

1) The user, one or our usual suspects or a new one, finds some unexpected behavior and promptly reports it as a bug

2) Even after being directed to read the FAQs, or the relevant documentation, or a previous forum discussion, he insists in the bug theory

3) The back and forth continues and links and answers are mostly ignored because, hey, it is a bug!

4) After several messages, finally it becomes clear the unexpected behavior is being provoked by the user doing something wrong according to the docs posted in the first answer.

5) The problem is finally solved, but at an unnecessarily high inconvenience for all involved, and the user is neither happy, because no one likes to be proved wrong in public.

Perhaps this is a corollary of the Dunning-Kruger effect and it cannot be avoided, but my reflection is:

a) No matter how intelligent you considers yourself, don't discard a priori the possibility of you doing something wrong when you are experienced unexpected results

b) Read the FAQs, the relevant documentation in the wiki, search the forum for similar experiences and, especially, be open to a)

c) Once you are invested in the "bug theory" and you make it public, the process will be more painful for all participants, included you. So do your due diligence first.

Hey, are you saying GC doesn't have bugs or we should not report them?

No, of course not, I am saying not all unexpected behaviors are bugs, and treating them as such beforehand doesn't help you or the project.

Sorry for the extension, and thanks for the collaboration.

Ale (edited to fix some grammar errors)

[Ale Martinez]

El jueves, 7 de enero de 2021 a la(s) 12:07:48 UTC-3, Ale Martinez escribió:

It seems some users have trouble searching the Wiki in particular (Find a Page on the right doesn't do what you expect) or the GitHub repository in general, so an image may help:

when you type the search terms in the upper left search box (Aerobic Decoupling in this case) and press enter the left panel shows the number of hits in different parts of the repository:

• Wikis (selected above) is useful when you are looking for documentation
• Issues is useful when you think you found an unreported issue
• Code is useful if you like to search the source code
• Commits is more technical and refers to changes in code
• Discussions are threads like this forum but in GitHub
• Packages are not being used in GC.

Hope it helps and, please, don't ask before a little search.

[Ale Martinez]

Lets make this the most FAQ, even when it is not true: https://github.com/GoldenCheetah/GoldenCheetah/wiki/FAQ-MOST-COMMON-QUESTIONS-OF-ALL#how-to-search-the-wiki-and-source-code 

[Steve Edmonds]

Even though it might seem obvious, without a Github account the search box is on the right.

[Ale Martinez]

Help menu documentation is updated: https://github.com/GoldenCheetah/GoldenCheetah/wiki/UG_Menu-Bar_Help

What's this? contextual help should be useful to go directly to the relevant wiki entry, without the need to ask in the forum as the the first option (?)

[Ale Martinez]

El jueves, 7 de enero de 2021 a la(s) 12:07:48 UTC-3, Ale Martinez escribió:

Friendly remainder: it is fine you use your intuitions to use GoldenCheetah without consulting the documentation, but when they prove insufficient -and they will likely do sooner or later- please see above before posting, specially if you plan to write a long essay or a chain of posts about your understanding of how GC works or doesn't, it is usually far more efficient to read the documentation, starting with FAQs.

Thank you.

[Ale Martinez]

Please, see the above before posting, and don't forget this forum (and GC project) is collaborative, you can get free services from fellow users and developers, but you are not entitled to. If you think you can "demand" (exigir in spanish, I am not sure demand is strong enough to be equivalent) them, think again.