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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

What you're describing sounds like industry-specific anecdotes from a very common, cross-industry reality about non technical users.

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I'd revise that to the far more irritating segment of users who think they're more technical than they really are. Actual non technical users are fine, because they generally know when they don't understand a thing. The thinks-their-technical users will bravely throw in whatever phrases they've heard mentioned in relation to a completely unrelated problem.

That's the super-user syndrome. They know enough to get themselves into a bind but not enough to get themselves out. It's difficult just trying to get an accurate description of the problem because they lace the description with theories about what the cause is.

"Please just describe the problem and, if possible, how you reproduce it. No, just describe the problem. What's happening when you press the button? No, just the problem! Not what you think is causing it."

It's a conundrum because good super-users can help less technical people in their groups. But, their issues tend to take more time to unravel.

I tend to associate "super-user" with an admin who knows what they are doing. Back in the 90's we called these folks "power users".

Yup. Power user was the name we used back then. If you had a good one, (s)he could save you support time.

I imagine this is especially prevalent for editors because they are expected to be the technical ones in a room of high-ego professionals. Every second of their day is them being judged on how super-user they are.

It's definitely not unique to Hollywood... Before I switched to infrastructure development I ran a Linux engineering group and among other things handled production support escalations. The job was often finding the actual problem while gently dissuading my customer the issue wasn't a pet theory and/or something they just Googled. In fact sometimes the escalations came specifically so I could weigh in on root cause after joining the bridge because the various parties couldn't agree.

A favorite was someone to run free and declare the system was "out of memory and must be swapping". It recurred so often I think that theory passed from group to group like a treasured heirloom until we wrote a FAQ on the subject. Fortunately in my opinion getting ops and development to work together built mutual respect for respective skill sets.

What, will you refuse to help me if I call you in deep distress and said that "xcode command line tools is failing to update because of the nginx 503 errors clearly visible in Safari"

I wouldn't absolutely refuse to help, but if you are like some users I've dealt with and you keep repeating that instead of answering specific questions I've actually asked† then I'll drop the call and mark the support ticket as paused‡ until the information requested is provided.

[†] Q: can you check A, User: why if the problem is Z? Q: could you do B and tell me what the response is?, User: but I'm sure the problem is Z, Q: what version of C do you have?, User: that shouldn't' matter because the problem is Z, ..."

[‡] meaning it is not running against any SLA clocks

The two matters could be separate symptoms of the same underlying problem for which more information is needed. Admittedly in this case you would probably be right and the tool is likely failing to update because it is getting the same 503:Overloaded responses from the http server, but that is not necessarily the case (perhaps the server is agent sniffing and provides a different, more human interpretable, response to requests from browsers, the response for humans is proxied by this server from another and that is currently overloaded, so the update tool isn't getting the same 503 responses that you are).

Yes

well, you're not wrong

I don't understand this.

> The thinks-their-technical users

English was not my first language and sometimes I get tripped up. What does this mean?

They meant "thinks-they're-technical", which might clear things up.

Putting dashes between a bunch of words isn't really a correct way to do this, but it's a way to smash a bunch of words together and pretend it's one word. In this case an adjective describing the users.

It's perfectly cromulent to hyphenate words this way. Doing so causes them to become adjectives. For instance, you would say "fast-paced agenda," not "fast paced agenda," or "fast, paced agenda." The latter two have a different—and in this example, weird—meaning.

In this case, I think it's a poor style choice, because there are two verbs and an adjective being combined, but there's nothing 'incorrect' about doing so. It might be clearer to say "users who think they are technical," but fixing the mixed pluralization and incorrect use of "their" would go a long way on their own.

What you did there, it has been seen. :)

What? Hyphenated compound adjectives have been a standard feature of English for centuries:

https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp

I suspect the trip-up was caused by mixing up their and they're.

It was supposed to be "thinks they're technical". In other words, people who think they are more technical than they really are.

That looks like a misspelling that should have been "thinks-they're-technical users" i.e. users who think they're technical but aren't as technical as they think they are.

They think they're technical users, but really they aren't. Generally these folks are people who have skills in other areas and have a partial or basic ability to use some complicated software. However, they don't have well-developed computer skills but are convinced that they do.

It means someone who believes they have a high technical ability but in reality has a low to mid ability and know some relevant words. Typically they apply them incorrectly when describing a problem or solution.

I think parent meant "Thinks-they're-technical users", as in the users in question believe themselves to have more knowledge about the domain than they actually do.

I believe it’s misspelled, but meant to be “think-they’re-technical” as in, describing users who think they are technical.

Should have been “thinks-they’re-technical”

It means users who believe themselves to be highly technical, but are not.

Amen.

On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

- Charles Babbage - Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), ch. 5 "Difference Engine No. 1"

"I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question" is my all-time favorite way to say "What is wrong with this clueless dipshit."

The 'light' variant of this question makes a lot of sence, though:

The askers were non-technical but very jaded in human nature, so they know the human-provided input might be slightly imperfect but not completely wrong.

Then the question is: Can a machine based on perfection cope? Will it output reasonable but slightly-wrong conclusions? Will it go off the rails and produce completely insane errors?

Answering this question requires a lot of interesting subtility, which has been completely rejected by babbage.

If you want to use incorrect data to get correct answers, you need a human. That's one of the fundamental differences between humans and computers.

> If you want to use incorrect data to get correct answers, you need a human.

More often, that just gets answers that are incorrect in ways other than (sometimes, in addition to, othertimes, instead of) those explicable by the incorrect data.

Floating point numbers are trying hard to rectify this ;-)

On slashdot, someone proposed the theory that this is a good question to ask if you have rational worldview, and know this kind of thing should be possible, but aren't sure if you're dealing with a scam artist who will tell you what you want to hear.

Yes, I've used that principle before; ask a question you know should be "no" and see what happens. Can that car tow this (way too heavy) thing? Will my dishwasher clean my dishes even though my water is full of sulpher? Will this (integrated graphics) computer play $LATEST_GAME at full settings? Will this plastic thing last ten years of solid use outdoors?

In my personal experience, I actually don't get the full-throated lie "Yes!" all that often, if ever, but I get a lot of uncomfortable waffling.

Indeed. In buying a new car some years back, I found a reliable way to translate answers. When the dealer answered, "Yes" it was generally truthful. But when they answered, "I think so", the actual answer was definitively "No".

The question makes sense rhetorically, to establish that the machine is still only as good as its operator, just faster.

That's generally true, but there's a more specific affliction you sometimes run into that the parent comment is referring to.

There are some single software programs so big and complex that you can build entire careers out of them. People who do that become wizards within that software suite, and then incorrectly generalize that to believing they know everything about computers. When really, they are Photoshop jockeys, Avid editors, Maya artists, etc. and they are mostly lost outside of those applications.

If you haven't worked in creative fields like video you may not have run into them, but they are definitely a breed.

(Developers fall prey to this sometimes too, but our job tends to require us to use a variety of tools and the underlying operating system itself, so we do end up with a greater breadth of experience.)

Working with support issues for at lest 20 years...

My take on this is that there are two types of non-technical users:

- stupid ones

- intelligent one

The intelligent ones know what they don't know. Or at least they understand what is their area of expertise. They focus on explanation of the problem and they do not make random conclusions.

The stupid ones do not know what they do not know and, of course, they think they are smart and know everything. It is so hard to work with them.

It is interesting that education level, nationality, race, etc. does not give any reasonable indication whether a non-technical users is intelligent or not.

http://3e.org/xy.png

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