irc macchat and guru's

Having started spending some time learning cocoa, you find yourself drawn to the a cocoa dev channel on freenode. Suddenly your back 20 years in time..

Of course you read the faq, you know you should ask a clear question and that you should include any relevant information. You know that you should google your error.
so your error is ... a generic error

You've seen this type of error before, on lots of different things. ( well you think you have and you have been reading google solid for the last 2 weeks on stuff, surely someone could just answer yes or no to the question )

So you ask..

Bad move

Read the Faq !!!!!!!

You read it, hmm nothing about this there ( you have read it before )

You post the error message which you didnt want to post before as it was a really simple "can I do this question". you didnt want to know anything more

Your question is useless

You reply in the negative, had you asked a similar question elsewhere, you know there are compatibility reasons why this might not work. Should you waste 15 minutes trawling google for the correct phrase or just ask?

Flaming continues. Google is quoted. Ah yes so there is the answer.

But all I wanted was yes or no. not a diatribe.

At times like this I wonder what the point of these channels is.
Is it

• Here's a bunch of people who know stuff and dont mind people learning and sadly yes they will make goofy questions now and then.


• Only ask a question if you have spent all your energy exhausting every other possibility


• Me and my friends have a really great time and please dont ask us a question unless you know the answer already.
  

I'm not an irc noob. I'm not a cocoa genius. Do I need to find another channel, #cocoahelp or something because what is the point of a channel called #macdev. Is there somewhere else I should ask questions because I dont know.

and yes I should have googled. but spending 10 lines to flame someone well.. its a good job we have the manuals. and yes I have rtfm but there are quite a lot and I've been wading through them.

NB. I've been on irc years. I've been flamed, I've flamed, but I just think some people enjoy feeling superior more than being superior. I remember some channels where people just bullied others and the sad thing was other people had great stuff to say and when they weren't there it was fascinating.

This isnt a moan, its just a ... omg this is still normal!?


funnily someone didnt mind explaining what their nick meant for the 3rd time that day. perhaps it should also be in the faq

Actually the final result was very helpful, but I wonder who else might ask a 'stupid' question another time that might help me, but wouldn't. I've also had some real help in there too.

Addendum
Interestingly someone went on to ask a question that I really wanted to know the answer to, however no response. Was this because they asked if they asked the question against the FAQ rules. Noone answered, but it was really good question. I still want to know the answer.