What is on Your Mind?

Here are some answers to some of the recent questions I have received about UNIX.COM. So, I thought I would take time to answer them here in this post:


Is it expected that the original poster "thank" everyone who responds to his / her discussion thread?

It is always a good practice in all of our lives to show appreciation and thank people who are a part of our lives and who help us along the way. Many UNIX.COM members spend a lot of their time helping others and are devoted to assisting others learn and improve their UNIX and Linux skills. It's always good practice (manners) to show your appreciation by clicking the "Thank You" icon at the bottom of their posts. Being a good community member is always appreciated and yes, perhaps expected, on most web sites, forums and indeed in everyday life, including life at UNIX.COM.

Another best practice at UNIX.COM is to reply, "Thanks {insert the user names of those who helped you} my issue is solved" or "Thanks {insert the user names of those who helped you} but I still have this issue... {inert your issue and the problems you are having here} ... ." where UNIX.COM members and moderators may also have the opportunity to click on the "Thank You" button to acknowledge the fact you have read the post and effectively tested the code or implemented whatever solution was suggested.


Is it okay to create a thread such as "What does this {i%*=} do?

Yes, is certainly OK to ask any technical question you wish about UNIX, Linux or any related technologies here. In general, questions like the one above in the question should be asked in the "beginners" forum. If possible, please minimize using code and special characters in the titles of discussions and use CODE tags and ICODE tags in your posts when posting code, code fragments, sample input, output and any text which not typical human conversation.

It is actually even more OK to post beginners questions after you have searched the forum archives for the same or a similar question. Chances are quite high your question has already been asked and answered over the many years UNIX.COM has been a question and answer community. Then, if you searched the forums without success at finding an answer or similar topic it is very helpful to post in your new question here "I searched for 'foo' and 'bar' but didn't find anything useful, so I'm asking .... "


Can you please create a "Introduce Yourself" forum?

Everyone is free and encouraged to introduce themselves in the "What is On Your Mind" forum or the "Member's Only" forum. Our experience here is that most people prefer to introduce themselves via their technical posts and only a very few people are interested in informal "new member" introductions at UNIX.COM; but of course you are both free and encouraged to introduce and write about yourself as you wish in the two forums just mentioned.


Please add some "Do's" to all the "Don'ts" in the Simple rules of the UNIX.COM forums: such as "How to politely tell a member his suggestion didn't work" or "How to Fit In to This Community"

We already have a section in the community rules page called "Additional helpful guidelines for all posters (for better, faster replies to questions)". However, we will consider expanding this area based on the recent questions and perhaps the answers to recently asked questions in this post. Thanks!


Please add a Signature feature to a member's profile, where he or she could list his hardware, OS, shell, etc. and would not have to type it in his or her initial post.

Signatures have always been disabled at UNIX.COM because they are typically used by bad Internet actors to spam the site and posts links to other sites in violation of community standards. Also, the vast majority of technical people these days have a wide variety of computers and technology in their lives (work, play, social, educational) and the software versions change often. It's much better to simply include the current system information in your posts based on the system you are working with at the time. This is best for the person asking the question and the people who provide answers. It is also better for the knowledge-base for future generations. You can easily save your preferred system information in your "Scrapbook / TODO" page on this site located in the UserCP menu and cut-and-paste your information if your system information stays the same and you don't want to type it each time you post.


As a perk of a becoming a Patreon sponsor can we have a benefit where a senior member "adopts" the new member? The new member can then send private messages to his "big brother" that he is too embarrassed to post in a public thread.

It is against the community rules at UNIX.COM to send any technical question to any member here via email or private message. These forums are for the benefit of the entire community and so all questions should be asked in the forums. There is a beginner's forum for beginner's questions and no one should ever be shy or embarrassed to ask beginners questions. Everyone here started out as a beginner.

For those who desire privacy or confidentiality for business or personal reasons; perhaps they wish to share data which is sensitive or business confidential in their questions; we have created a new Patreon sponsorship tier we call "Black Raven" and one of the benefits of this tier is a private forum dedicated to a member's desire to ask post and ask questions privately. Do not send members private questions via private message or email. It's not permitted because it requires members to take time off from their family to ask questions, often repeatedly privately which do not benefit the community at-large.


All over the world there is a decline in the interest in forums due to the fact that it is easier to simply find the solution to our problems using Google. How are we going to address this?

This is an interesting question. When we do a Google search we generally end up at forums and similar technical sites because our questions, or a similar questions, are likely to have been asked and answered before. Hence, forums are very critical knowledge-building communities because without these sites, their would be little to find when we do a Google search. Google is not the "knowledge creator", Google is the "knowledge indexer". Of course, this site was much more active in the early days of the Internet before there were so many great knowledge repositories for UNIX and Linux, including this one. UNIX.COM was one of the first moderated forums to focus on a high signal-to-noise ratio related to UNIX and Linux technologies. We are constantly working to make the site easier to use and more fun for all our valuable members.


What is up with the Patreon sponsorship here and are members expected to pay for answers to their questions or other help?

Absolutely not. The concept of patronage comes from the idea of a "patron of the arts and sciences" where people who appreciate the arts and sciences become patrons of artists. This concept is an old and established as human society itself. The modern version of this is to consider technical skills as "art and science" and so the new-age digital / technical artists may also have patrons. Just like painters, dancers, writers, athletes and other artists., the advent of modern "technical patronage" and "digital artists" benefits the entire technical community and has given rise to great video tutorials, software, hardware, cool innovate gadgets and more. Patronage is also a great way to show appreciation toward those people and groups who have dedicated their lives to the art and science of technology and to helping others with less experience. This is why we have created the ability for members and friends of to be patrons of any UNIX.COM moderator they choose, or to the site as a whole. All patronage goes toward improving the user experience. Here is the link to become a patron of our team here at UNIX.COM, .


I noticed a change in the site fonts lately. What 's up with that?

Recently our moderation team discovered some small, but important nuanced differences in how code is represented on the site in CODE and ICODE tags. These differences happened because of inconsistencies in how code is represented in typography. This was certainly true of various zeros including slashed zeros, dotted zeros and "plain ole'" zeros. After some experimentation, we decided to go with the "Anonymous Pro" font family for all code on the site. After that decision was made, we picked two font families to compliment "Anonymous Pro" which are currently "Montserrat" for the desktop typography and "Roboto" for the mobile typography, All our font families are sans-serif, for consistency and clarity. Having a consistent font family installed also insures that different system default fonts for a wide variety of users do not cause confusion because it is best that all users are looking at the same typography when working together on technical problems, especially code.


Please feel free to ask other site-usage related questions you may have; and I hope this quick "answers to recently asked questions" was helpful.

v0.2 - Wolf's changes
v0.3 - vbe's changes
v0.31 - Neo's small changes

It is even more OK after having searched the forum archives for exactly this question. Chances are it has been answered over and over again. If one did in fact search and come up empty it is very helpful to say something to the effect of i searched for 'foo' and 'bar' but didn't find anything useful. Answers may include:

You should have searched for "blubb" instead which turned up <this link> and <that link>

or indeed a genuine new answer because the question has never been asked before. In both cases you take away something from it.

Before posting you might want to correct some typos:
on => one

a => as

consistently => consistency

bakunin

OK.. edited... now we have v0.2 - Wolf's changes, above.

Thanks Wolf! Hope I corrected all to your satisfaction ... if not, I'm sure you will let us know! - the Rolling Stones.

I would add even more, it would be nice to say "Thanks my issue is solved" or " thanks but I still have this issue..." where mods may very well click on the "thank you" to aknowledge the fact you have read the post and effectively tested the code or whatever suggested...

Updated: v0.3 - vbe's changes . Thanks Victor!

Hi Neo...

I can unequivocally say with experience that UNIX.COM does come up a lot when I am searching GOOGLE for results to some of my esoteric ideas posted on here.
It is always about how you search. After years of use I still haven't got the hang of that major detail yet as it is always down to how deeply one understands the subject one is searching for.
RudiC has recently posted some hum[-]dinger solutions to bash string handling and I would never know how to search for those with my level of shell scripting knowledge, BUT, and a big BUT, these rarities are now in the internet ether because of just that, they ARE so rare and few people other than the _hardened_ pros' would know about them.

Stack Overflow comes up a lot but this site certainly sees its fair percentage of GOOGLE hits, heck I even posted a thread about this some time ago.
Also judging by the number of newcomers, almost daily, then they must get the UNIX.COM badge from somewhere, and that somewhere is a search engine and more than likely the GOOGLE one.


My 5 pennoth.

With regards to the Google search question.... Even with Google, many find that it is easier to do their search for answers within the site, and thus avoid q&a that may not be relevant.