[Wine] How can we improve WNE?

[James Mckenzie]

fcmartins <wineforum-user at winehq.org> on April 8th:
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>James, I fully share your viewpoint, but I have to disagree with the use of the word "idiots", or derivatives. It is incorrect and can not help Wine.I have done quite a bit of helpdesk and learned to respect the users, which most IT people don't. They like to call users idiots, when in fact the users might just be ignorant in a fair way (no training, no time, no personal interest, other priorities - do their work, enjoy the game they paid). Even worse, often it is the fault of the IS system and it's all to easy to blame the user. 
>
I agree with your viewpoint, but there are folks out there that would not own a computer without the aid of Mr. Gates & company.  There are stories about phone calls being taken where the user's monitor was not displaying and that there was a power outage.  Fortunately, the receipiant of the call took the time to explain why the monitor was not working and the caller accepted the explanation.  There are users out there that have no clue what a power switch is and what it is used for.  I've dealt with them face to face and the solution was to hook up a power strip where they could shut everything off and turn it all back on.  I don't put the blame on the user and I don't desire to call them stupid.  They are not.  As an example, my first wife was very computer illiterate and that worked to her advantage as she did not try to do things with computers they were not designed for.  However, it took a friend of ours over eight hours to work through one page in Word with her.  These are the folks I refer to as ID10Ts.  There is the class of folks I call nOObs.  They are familiar with Windows, know a little about how it works under the hood and just need a guiding hand to get where they need to be in Wine.  

>Sorry for the preaching, I understand you are an experience professional and you don't mean to be offensive on anyone (you are defending them), but I'm also an experienced IT professional, and I deeply dislike the lack of professionalism shown by this and other types of abuses of IT people on users (often taking advantage of their technical ignorance).
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I don't try to take advantage of their ignorance.  However, there is a point where you finish trying to drown the horse and figure that you are not going to make it drink.  I've worked with that type of user.  You can show them the movements of the mouse, the keys to click and they still manage to kill their computer on a weekly basis.  Maybe they do it for fun, but it is definitely not malicious.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss, but to some of us it is a major source of work.  It mainly happens on a Friday afternoon, one-half hour before going home.  These are the folks we need to KISS the system so that they will know what they are doing is dangerous and may cause serious damage.  This is along the lines of running Wine as root and other actions.

Also, to any user that found my descriptions offensive, they are NOT meant for you.  If you are reading this forum/mailing list, you are much smarter then the folks I'm talking about.  I stand ready to assist you in getting your favorite program running with Wine, especially if you own a MacIntosh computer.

Very respectfully,

James McKenzie