From: IN%"brad@his.com" "Brad Knowles" 2-FEB-1997 03:29:09.36
> 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.
What proportion of _new_ (say, have used Internet email for less
than 3 months total) users does AOL have, both as a proportion of AOL users
and as a proportion of new users on the Internet? These would appear to be
more significant statistics than the proportion of Internet users going via
AOL (20%, as you've said before). I suspect the result would tend to confirm
your above statement, and Chuq (sp?)'s findings.
> 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.
I would personally attribute this to A. failures in the educational
system; B. liberals busily trying to make sure (and succeeding in convincing
people that this _should_ be the case) that people don't have to take care
of themselves in regards to income; C. conservatives busily trying to make
sure (and succeeding in convincing people that this _should_ be the case)
that people don't have to take care of themselves in regards to ideas.
(If you aren't a libertarian like me, feel free to delete either B or C
as appropriate for your consideration; blaming either side works almost as
well as both.) This manifestation is a syndrome that I've seen a lot of, and
that I'll be commenting on further.
In other words, most people today can't figure something out from
simple pre-packaged information; they have to be hand-held. And with a
lot lower proportion of experienced to new users on AOL (and on the other
quickly-expanding services you mention below), the hand-holding doesn't
happen.
> How, then, do we educate a community of users that is even more
>clueless than this average?
Well, A. convince the marketing people not to expand so fast
(the recent debacle with expanding too fast in terms of hardware
may teach them something... or it may just show exactly how little
they're thinking about things like this); and B. don't make things
so easy for within-service stuff.
The latter appears insane... until you understand what I
mean (I hope). First, people who are used to having to work to
understand how to get stuff within a service to work will be used
to having to work to understand stuff outside of a service. They
won't be used to unnecessary levels of hand-holding (as opposed to
the necessary variety I spoke of earlier) and to service providers
being nice to them despite impoliteness, _determined_ cluelessness,
and (to put it bluntly) idiocy. (Of course, part of this is that
syndrome I mentioned earlier... that essentially says (in this case)
that people who you're not paying to be nice to you should be just
as nice to you as people you are paying.) Second, they'll have had
to figure out things on their own - which is about the only way I
know of to teach people to keep on doing that. (I will comment that
GUIs are pretty bad about this, at least for those that (unlike me)
find them easy to use. They don't teach you anything about the guts
of the computer. When you're used to clicking on a nice dialog box
to request help from someone official, you aren't used to figuring
out who to send the help request to when it isn't for a dialog
box.) Third, it filters out the idiots, both those who are dumb
to start with and those who are effectively so because of that
syndrome. (I mean no insult to _all_ AOL, etcetera users by this
statement; I have a number of friends and family members who use
AOL. It's just that making things too easy to do without _learning_
and _thinking_ has this effect.)
Now, there is some user-friendliness that should be
increased... namely, those aspects that make it less likely that
the user will bother someone who isn't being paid for the job.
The mail controls bug recently mentioned here is a definite
example - having mail bouncing that's coming from someone you've
sent mail to is more of a problem for the blockee than the
blocker.
> 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".
Yeah. I'm worried about it too. I'm considering having
subscription by an approval-only process... and having the default
approval for WebTV, Juno, and (I'm afraid) AOL being no approval.
Unless someone's got someone else I know who'll recommend them, they
may not be able to get on my list. I don't want to do this... but I
will if I have to.
Incidentally, I'm not _that_ worried about the AT&T et al
stuff, unlike the WebTV et al. Quite simply, I doubt they're going
to be very good at being too user-friendly.
> You think eight million users creates a concentrated percentage
>of clueless users? Try 250 million, and that's just in the U.S.
Yeah. I don't know if educational systems, politics, etcetera
in Europe, Japan, et al will be worse or better than the ones in the
US. I suspect worse in the case of Europe (hand-holding like Germany's
belief that it will go Nazi again if it doesn't block _icons_ of
swasticas (see CorelDraw, as I recall), plus the overall welfare
state); I suspect something in between worse and better in the case of
Japan. (They seem likely (as a _vast_ (over)generalization) to be about
as clueless (educational systems based on memorization don't encourage
thinking), but not to be as noisy about it.)
> 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.
Same here. That's one reason that the mailing list I'm getting
ready to run (when grad school gives me the time...) will be called
Meritocracy.
> Does anyone have any ideas?
I'm sorry if I've been too discouraging, or too appearing of
trolling (I'm not, honest... not that such a claim does much good).
I'm not meaning to get into an argument, especially not on the list.
Some may call me cynical; I consider myself realistic. I'll be happy
to _discuss_ this with those of the optimist persuasion.
-Allen
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