wow, these forums have become a scary place to dip a toe. When the subject and the first 15 lines of a post must document proof of prior searches just to as a question. http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5699

If phpbb had a better search engine I MIGHT see the tension. But I honestly dont see the value in posting responses to post that only literally say "search the forum" but really mean "I am not answering your question"

Is it really that hard to just not respond. Given some spare time and appropriate knowledge, I will offer advice to a question that has been answered before...often quoting another thread with a solution. In my opinion, this does many positive things,

1) helps the question asker
2) shows that the answer may have been located with a different search (often it's hard to know what to search for, many of the items in these forums are acromyns of software/hardware terms that are new to folks...i.e. audio issues to a newbie will not automatically become a search for ALSA or OSS)
3) adds another message to be located by a future search...this message will contain the question in the newbie's words and a link. maybe this will help in the future searches
4) limits the terse 'search the forum' messages that add ZERO to the community
5) doesn't treat newbie like aliens...maybe they will grow to solve your biggest problem in the future

The other options is to JUST DONT RESPOND. why say that you have nothing to say? maybe someone else is willing to help out.

Hey, its not my forum, Im just number one here of almost 4000.

Maybe we can hold back on the posts that add nothing and try to play nice.

Just my $.02

_________________
R5F1 - Dell P4 2.4Ghz 500MB - PVR250 x 2 - GeForce FX 5200 - Onboard sound/NIC 80GB ATA/250GB ATA/400GB SATA

And then there are the threads where Cecil has to ask "Did you read the installation pamphlet?" and gets a response like "Pamphlet? What pamphlet? " c.f. - http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5692

And this despite the fact that kmkittre otherwise sounded clue enabled... Sigh...

if Cecil (or anyone, just using your example) feels the need to respond with "Did you read the installation pamphlet?" then why not respond with

"Did you read the installation pamphlet? http://mysettopbox.tv/doc.html#autoinstall"

Then, not only would the original question asker have more info...there would be a link in the forum between the users "seeming stupid question" and the pamphet. future "stutid question askers" will now have one more chance to help themselves to the answer.

The "Did you read the installation pamphlet?" response is not particularly helpful.

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R5F1 - Dell P4 2.4Ghz 500MB - PVR250 x 2 - GeForce FX 5200 - Onboard sound/NIC 80GB ATA/250GB ATA/400GB SATA

I guess sometimes we just get a God complex an only help those who try to help themselves.

I mean when someone asks a question that is covered in the pamphlet the install instructions a couple of times on the wiki, in the faq and answered several dozen times in the forums it just makes you not want to expend the effort to type it again, but I know I for one haven't said search the forum when the answer wasn't there. and usually by just searching for the exact error the person posted.

anyway's that should cover my rant quotient for tonight

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

my experience, over a year ago, was "Wow I might be able to get this stuff to work" I down loaded the ISO and started to install. Sadly it took me about a month to get anything working I figured out that my soundblaster Live was the issue. but my first two weeks were full of "stupid questions" that were answered by you guys.

I ended up finding my answer buried in an ALSA forum...but it took some hand holding and putting up with dumb question to even know that ALSA existed and what it was.

had I received many "search the forum" posts, I'm sure I wouldnt be here to day.

well, thats enough for tonight.

Party on, and be Excellant to each other!

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R5F1 - Dell P4 2.4Ghz 500MB - PVR250 x 2 - GeForce FX 5200 - Onboard sound/NIC 80GB ATA/250GB ATA/400GB SATA

Sometimes just knowing that the answer is out there is key. Or being told to search for "magic keywords". Or ...

Not to mention the number of newbies you see "bump" the thread when they don't get a response in a couple hours...

Gentlemen,

I have to agree with khrusher, sometimes things seem a bit "snippy" in response to some of the questions. Sorry but I just have to throw out my pennys worth also. I see a lot of talent , a lot of entusiasum (spell check would be great feature) and a lot of people that want to learn and get their feet wet with the penguin.

What better way to encourage new comers to the open source world than an oppertunity to build a linux driven system that they can place in the center of their homes and be able to say "ya, I built that and works great. Had some help from the crew on the mysettopbox.tv forum etc etc"

Many people like to build things, how many years did Heatkit company serve that need and now here is one of the most dynamic packages to come along in quite some time to build an awsome entertainment system that is afordable by most.

I think Cecil and Dale deserve a special thank you and also Mr Issac Richards for the Mythtv and Hans Knopper for the Knoppix. Also the Debian developers for the foundation of KnoppMyth. How many man/women hours are invested to bring this package to this current status. A lot of thank you's are needed.

As a thought, the "famous pamphlet" should, IMHO , be a part of the cd. After a download / burn the pamphlet should be available to read (even on a windows box) before one were even to begin the install. It took me several weeks to catch the one of the biggest gotchas, creating a mythtv user at install time. Had to reread the "pamphlet" to catch that one big key, Do not add a user of mythtv.

Anyway, great group of people here, good questions, some real good answers and ideas. I hope to be a positive part and maybe help the new comers at least a little.
Mike

Hey now, tjc hehe. I was aware of the installation documentation, in fact I had it printed out. The think is that Cecil called it "the pamphlet". I had never seen the documentation referred to in that way. I hear pamphlet and I immediatly think of those three-fold paper documents in dentist offices...
If he had said, as you did, "installation pamphlet" that may have rung home with me, I don't know.

It just seems that recently Cecil has been flaming the forums. They are his, so he's allowed to do that, but I would rather have no answer than someone saying "This has been addressed many times, do a search." That's an insult to me. I will never start a new thread until I do at least two or three searches, usually more.

FYI tjc, I installed the 5200 and have it working. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I wasn't seeing live tv or recorded tv shows until I realized (2 hours after banging my head against it) that I was still outputting that video on my PVR-350...

I have found these forums and the wiki very useful, but it seems like I have to get pretty creative with searches sometimes to find the answers I need...

Cecil, I love KnoppMyth, kudos. I would appreciate it if you heeded the old adage of "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." At least in my threads

I agree with you tjc. At least the "search the forum" posts tell the poster that the answer is here. It may be difficult to find, but at least it should spur them on to search a bit harder. If they then come back to their own thread and link it to the answer that they eventyally find, it would help the community as a whole.

If you have ever worked in Tech Support you know that people will ask the same questions over and over that are usually documented. People just dont read the documentation and many of the answers to those questions are in the documentation. PHPBB's search is horrible. IIRC it is just a basic SQL query nothing more. We should be using Google for that search. The Wiki has made it much easier to find the information though.

When I started using KnoppMyth, it was the first time I had ever used Linux. I think that is a constant issue where this is a Windows user's first taste of Linux. Google is your best friend during this time.

Also, perhaps the structure of forum topics could be tidied up. I have noticed an awful lot of posts go into the wrong forum. Either every person who makes such a post is an ignorant boob who doesn't care, or perhaps the very structure of the forum is confusing to people. (OK, I admit, I'm talking about myself here.)

The whole "major topic, minor topic" thing goes away as soon as you get into one of the forum area. For example, I'm now in "General". But I have no idea if I'm in Linux/General or KnoppMyth/General. The "major" topic is hidden once I'm in the forum area. It doesn't appear anywhere that I can see.

I think perhaps renaming the topics to use one level of heirarchy could be a positive step. Perhaps some topics could be combined as well. Why is there a "hints and tips" as well as a "problems and solutions?" Don't they both kind of overlap? I'm not sure where I'd post something between those two.

Probably the worst offender is the KnoppMyth/Installation area. This is for installation issues, but only for KnoppMyth. Not Linux, not even Myth. Just KnoppMyth, right? Maybe we should group the area more like:

Installation - Linux
Installation - Myth (new, not in forum presently)
Installation - KnoppMyth

The idea is to make it clearer where things go by grouping them together. The major/minor structure prevents areas like Installation - Linux and Installation - KnoppMyth from being close to one another.

Am I all wet, or does anyone else have problems getting their posts into the right bucket?

_________________
Do you code to live, or live to code?
Search LinHES forum through Google

you're not all wet, Ill go one step furture. My practice is to login and click 'View post since last visit" I read the posts and couldnt give two hoots which forum they are in.

Topics in all of these forums are all related to knoppmyth or knoppmyth users. And since the search function doesnt allow filtering by forum, I really dont see the value in the separation.

Down side to the granular forums is the likely hood of posting to the wrong one....at your own risk. when the message volume is low, I can see the value, but there are too many messages to just go read a forum without filtering with a search.

If I search for 'static' I will end up reading a post without regard to its forum.

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R5F1 - Dell P4 2.4Ghz 500MB - PVR250 x 2 - GeForce FX 5200 - Onboard sound/NIC 80GB ATA/250GB ATA/400GB SATA

I wouldn't mind someone telling me to search the forums if the search featured worked worth a damn.

Just yesterday someone told me to search for "appliances" but I never could find the right thread and gave up.

I could swear that I said "appliance" without an 's'. Here is one brief recent thread that would turn up if you left it off: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5413

(BTW - This is a good general search tip. When in doubt strip the final 's' from plurals and possesives..)

At least once upon a time (possibly before the last hack/crash) there was a longer and more detailed write up about the reasons that (at least your backend) MythTV box should be considered an appliance and set up as a dedicated server. You've already stumbled over one of them, scheduled tasks don't get run, another is that almost the whole point of having a PVR is for it to automatically collect programs that you want to watch at your convenience, and it can't do that if it's off or running MS-Excel.

If you're concerned about the power usage get a low power machine which has a compatible BIOS sleep/wake timer. With my old box I did the math and came up with a cost of ~$2-3 month, which was lower than the porch light which is on a timer...

No insult intended. I was expressing dismay that folks who would most likely test "clue positive" couldn't find the documentation, and didn't realize that you just didn't recognize it under that name.