[aur-general] Thoughts on managing spurious deletion requests...

[Mark Weiman]

On Mon, 2016-06-13 at 21:06 -0700, Patrick Burroughs (Celti) wrote:
> It seems like not a day goes by where I don't see someone asking for
> help building, installing, or using a package in the comments of a
> deletion or orphan request.
> 
> I know that several methods have been tried to reduce this, but they
> haven't helped — so has anyone considered bowing to the inevitable
> and
> adding an "Assistance" request type to the "Submit Request" dropdown,
> and of course making it the default?
> 
> It could simply post a comment on the package page, perhaps with a
> special flag, or perhaps have it email the package maintainer.
> 
> ~Celti

I personally think that the wiki says it the best...

"When asking for help, ***read the manual***, do your research and provide details for those you are asking for assistance."

The AUR is well documented on the wiki and that the TUs or maintainers or other AUR users shouldn't have to provide help on how to use the AUR. Perhaps adding a link somewhere at the top (where the TU/user/AUR home stuff are) taking them to the wiki's page on the AUR. It's a waste of time, in my opinion, to have to restate what's already written down and/or linking people to the documentation when they can do that themselves.

When a package of mine gets a request that is because someone's not willing to find their own solutions, I send that person an email linking them to the wiki. Then a TU just rejects the request.

Just my two cents.