At 1:01 AM -0500 2/2/1997, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
>Anyway, just some data to chew on. It turns out, from what I can see,
>that AOL users are different than the rest fo the net, not in positive
>ways. AOL's *not* just bigger. They're doing a rotten job of educating
>their users on how to use these internet tools, and their users are
>doing a rotten job of using the tools we give them, starting with
>instructions and help files. And I see a general lack of tacking
>responsibility for themselves and expecting others to take
>responsibility for them in their responses to me, which also aren't
>showing up from any other service....
I guess this means I'm going to have to violate my most recent
statement in this thread.
I've read this note, and I've known you long enough to know that
there is no need to do the statistical analysis. You've convinced me
that I was wrong, and that we do have significantly higher percentage
of clueless users than the average.
We clearly need to educate our users better.
But, taking my AOL hat off now, how would you educate a large
user community like this? I mean, the average Usenet poster seems
quite clueless enough (give most of the posts I've read and personal
email messages I get from people asking me to solve their problem for
them), and quite incapable of reading the amazingly complete and
accurate array of information that can be found in the FAQ archives.
I mean, you can lead a user to the FAQ Archives, but you can't make
them drink from the Font of Knowledge or the Well of Wisdom.
How, then, do we educate a community of users that is even more
clueless than this average?
Up until a few months ago, it took a fairly significant
investment of money to get on the 'net -- probably something like
$1000 for the computer, then you had to understand how to hook up a
modem to it, and use whatever software (whether it's AOL or something
else) to get online.
But now, you've got WebTV. $300, and it does everything for you
-- you just have to plug in three cables (one power, one video, one
telephone). The ISP access provided by AT&T WorldNet (and the RBOCs)
are going to create similar problems -- Internet "dialtone" for many
people will now be provided by the same folks who provide their
"voice dialtone".
You think eight million users creates a concentrated percentage
of clueless users? Try 250 million, and that's just in the U.S.
How can we educate a community like this? I mean, this is a
group of people, the vast majority of whom can't even fix the
blinking "12:00" on their VCRs -- how can we possibly hope to educate
them to a level we consider minimally acceptable?
As a guy who sees the FAQ he currently maintains growing ad
infinitum (as I dumb it down further and further, to try and answer
more and more basic questions), I'm beginning to get quite
disheartened here.
Does anyone have any ideas?
--
Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com
comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer <http://www.his.com/~brad/>
finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code
The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at <http://www.his.com/~brad/sendmail/>
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