[G1 Android Development] grivad:
Just a note, and my personal opinion on the matter. And no, I'm not pointing a finger at you, seaweeduk, but just using your response as an example. It's a good one.

Although I have quite some experience doing this stuff, and I have devoted LOTS of time reading about it so am not personally affected by this particular issue, I can understand some users' frustration.

The problem is that "TFM" is now several THOUSAND posts long, spread over several hundred pages, spread over several threads. Unless you know exactly what to search for and what your answer really looks like, and have time to wade through sometimes hundreds of posts to find your definitive answer, the task to find an answer within the threads can be daunting and tedious. It's a little unruly.

Sometimes the answer isn't as clear as you'd expect and it's overlooked, or sometimes the answer comes in the form of several post with bits of info aggregated into one answer. For some, it's tough to grasp. Some people haven't been reading every new post in this thread from day one. Everyone has to learn somehow, right?

I have been "hacking" phones and experimenting with all kinds of mods to all kinds of devices for over 10 years, and even I have questions sometimes. "I can tell you 100% if you are having problems following it it is because YOU are doing something wrong, (some pointless and counterproductive personal attack blah blah blah)" is simply not true -- I did figure it out myself, but I followed these instructions to the letter and even I had some issues. Unrelated to installation, sure, but still had issues that I had not experienced before and required questions.

Perhaps instead of just telling users with questions, "This has been answered 8 billion times before, go search, read, and experiment for several hours and figure it out yourself, regardless of other extenuating circumstances I have no idea about that may make this difficult for you, and I've spent more time telling you to go gtfo and read than I would have spent just answering your question, even with just a link", perhaps a FAQ or wiki should be created with links to posts answering "common" issues..?

I mean, it seems by the tone of some of the posts in this thread that some of you have an intimate knowledge of exactly which issues have and have not been resolved which others may not find as easily, as well as where in these giant threads the answers exist, when, by whom, etc. so I'd imagine this shouldn't be too tough for some of you, right? If I had the knowledge that some of you seem to have, I'd do it myself. Maybe I will, but that would require *gasp* asking questions about things that have answers already out there somewhere. I guess I should spend a few days finding them myself, instead of asking someone who might know the answer a question that could be answered in a few seconds, right? Sigh.

Just my 2¢. As a three-year member and several-more-year frequenter of these forums, seems some people have a tremendous amount of pent up anger about something and are letting it out here. Especially those that have been members for a couple of months who seem to know everything about everything.