Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Following a link in a response to a recent request, I made an observation.
[Tutorial] Automatic functions in Writer - enable / disable constitutes around 1000 words. Fits on two pages, more or less. There is one single comment: "Wow, much to read".

If that is the typical reaction to more than one screenful of content, then I must stop my rants, anecdotes and digressions. I must have scared more users away than those I have helped.

END RANT. NOT USEFUL. STOP!

There. I restrained myself. Thank you.

Please; don't hold back - tell us how you really feel

I must agree - these days it seems that people want the Readers Digest condensed version as some seem to have the attention span of a goldfish.

Unfortunately, Keme, there is a generation which has limited attention span and which will not read instructions that are not in a short, bulleted list.

I hope you are feeling better now you have got that off your chest!

@robleyd: That long? I am astounded!

Actually it seems it may be less according to a study a few years ago which claims the goldfish has a longer attention span - at nine seconds - than people at eight seconds.

It should be noted that this was a study by Microsoft, of Canadians. Whether that skews the outcome, I know not

Edit: On topic - it may be that we are castigating the wrong generation; it seems the comment poster claims, in another post, to be a nonagerian

It is definitely not just youngsters who don't pay attention! Any time I send an email to a group, it is clear that half of the recipients don't read beyond the title. Maybe I'm just too boring or maybe all this "smart" technology is turning us into zombies.

FJCC wrote:It is definitely not just youngsters who don't pay attention! Any time I send an email to a group, it is clear that half of the recipients don't read beyond the title. Maybe I'm just too boring or maybe all this "smart" technology is turning us into zombies.

Am I alone in thinking that many posters don't seem to read the responses to their posts?

And if two people respond, they seem to completely ignore the first response.

Might be good to take a positive angle. The poster might thought the topic was less complex and never thought about those features and possibilities. The layout of the artical is good, much better than my philosophy lecture notes I got from professor long ago (one sentence per 1 page on average).
BTW the word 'Thanks' looks positive to me and not sarcastic.

eremmel wrote:Might be good to take a positive angle. [...]

You are right, of course.

I did not mean to criticise the poster as such. He certainly may have intended to state that it is "lots of good stuff". Still, the immediate reaction - that it is "much to read" - illustrates the widespread conception that everything should be simple and intuitive and require no effort.

I guess that you could say it was mostly venting on my behalf, not really considering the other person's perspectives, just being generally fed up of users who expect me to learn stuff for them (and wdc is not one of those users). All too often RTFM and STFW do not reach in to the user, and STFU is a bit harsh and not very productive.

I agree with you that many people get lazy and don't realize that they learn much more when the discover their own answers on google or in help.
On the Dutch form I just refer to google (with search phrase) or to the Help (with search phrase) and give a very condensed abstract.

The difficulty I've with the Help that you have to know the nomenclature of AOO, before you can find something. This is different to MS Office (and I hate the Dutch help: can never imagine the translations).
The used phrases in the help are consistent, but adding a synonym list to the search would make live easy for occasional usage.

And it is always good to express ones frustration now and then...