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Asking for help!
It is time for your friendly neighborhood reminder about asking for help!
If you're stuck on something, confused about something, need somebody to walk you through something, would like to talk through something, aren't sure about something, want confirmation of something, want cheerleading or a second pair of eyeballs on something, or anything of the sort, please please please ask. This goes for whether you're just starting out or if you've been doing this for ages.
For those who irc, a quick or casual question in #dreamwidth-dev is fine, but we do have people who don't irc -- and the problem with asking more involved questions on irc is that the answers are ephemeral and can't be shared more widely. I know how easy it is to slip into having most discussions in irc (the real-time nature of it really is irresistable sometimes) but I'd like to encourage everybody to use![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_dev and dw_dev_training more frequently.
Don't feel like you can't post admitting that you don't know something, and if you're confused about something or want more information, don't wait until somebody posts something related to ask about it! (If you look back at my own posts indw_dev_training for instance, you'll see that I'm certainly no stranger to "halp, i broke it" type posts myself.)
For those who are offering help, meanwhile, please try to keep your responses in the same place as the question was asked, or at least make sure that someone returns to the original post to update with the outcome -- for instance, if somebody posts todw_dev_training asking for help on a project, and you happen to catch them in irc or by email or instant message, one of you should come back and comment on the post with a summary afterwards. That way, everybody else can benefit from the information.
Likewise, if a conversation in irc covers stuff that it's likely more than one person is confused about, it's fine to say "actually, you know, can you post this to dw-dev or dw-dev-training so everybody can get the answer, or write up a page for the wiki explaining how it works?"
Folks who've been doing this for a while: There are a lot of things in our process and in our codebase that are Very Complicated and grew slowly over time, and we've been doing our very best to get them documented as we trip over them so new people don't have to find someone and ask "okay, so how do I make an account on my 'hack paid?" (Answer for anybody reading along: there are a few ways to do it, but the best way is to give your admin account the "payments" priv, then go to /admin/pay, load the account, and grant the paid time.) Any time you catch yourself answering a question like that, see if you (or somebody else who's participating in the conversation) can take a second and dump the information in the wiki. If you don't have wiki editing privs, see![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
foxfirefey!
I think that about covers stuff I've noticed lately, but if anybody has any questions, ask me! I shall even model good behavior and say, ask me here and not in irc. :) (Okay, mostly because I've been minimizing irc use because of my hand surgery, but still.)
If you're stuck on something, confused about something, need somebody to walk you through something, would like to talk through something, aren't sure about something, want confirmation of something, want cheerleading or a second pair of eyeballs on something, or anything of the sort, please please please ask. This goes for whether you're just starting out or if you've been doing this for ages.
For those who irc, a quick or casual question in #dreamwidth-dev is fine, but we do have people who don't irc -- and the problem with asking more involved questions on irc is that the answers are ephemeral and can't be shared more widely. I know how easy it is to slip into having most discussions in irc (the real-time nature of it really is irresistable sometimes) but I'd like to encourage everybody to use
dw_dev and dw_dev_training more frequently.Don't feel like you can't post admitting that you don't know something, and if you're confused about something or want more information, don't wait until somebody posts something related to ask about it! (If you look back at my own posts in
dw_dev_training for instance, you'll see that I'm certainly no stranger to "halp, i broke it" type posts myself.) For those who are offering help, meanwhile, please try to keep your responses in the same place as the question was asked, or at least make sure that someone returns to the original post to update with the outcome -- for instance, if somebody posts to
dw_dev_training asking for help on a project, and you happen to catch them in irc or by email or instant message, one of you should come back and comment on the post with a summary afterwards. That way, everybody else can benefit from the information.Likewise, if a conversation in irc covers stuff that it's likely more than one person is confused about, it's fine to say "actually, you know, can you post this to dw-dev or dw-dev-training so everybody can get the answer, or write up a page for the wiki explaining how it works?"
Folks who've been doing this for a while: There are a lot of things in our process and in our codebase that are Very Complicated and grew slowly over time, and we've been doing our very best to get them documented as we trip over them so new people don't have to find someone and ask "okay, so how do I make an account on my 'hack paid?" (Answer for anybody reading along: there are a few ways to do it, but the best way is to give your admin account the "payments" priv, then go to /admin/pay, load the account, and grant the paid time.) Any time you catch yourself answering a question like that, see if you (or somebody else who's participating in the conversation) can take a second and dump the information in the wiki. If you don't have wiki editing privs, see
foxfirefey!I think that about covers stuff I've noticed lately, but if anybody has any questions, ask me! I shall even model good behavior and say, ask me here and not in irc. :) (Okay, mostly because I've been minimizing irc use because of my hand surgery, but still.)
Re: state of J.J.