Why is the official Nextcloud help community so combative? I’ve been working with Nextcloud for about 3 months in various configurations and every time I’ve had to seek assistance there it has been an unwelcome experience.
Even when I say something to the effect of “I’m having this problem with “X”, I think I’ve done something wrong in configuration, where should I look first?” I almost always get a sharp response at best, and most often a response akin to: “You’re wrong, that problem doesn’t exist. I’ve tested it on my server.” This latest time, I’ve found a problem in 3 different installations, 2 other users confirmed they also experience the problem and my thread is just hijacked with “Well we don’t see it, so it doesn’t exist.” and “You should have told us “X” if you wanted any real help.” or “Why are you asking here instead of somewhere else?” Every time I post there, I find myself backing away cautiously while vitreol just erupts.
I’m not one of the users who just willy nilly starts posting questions everywhere - I go through lot of self-help effort, investigating, researching and looking at official documentation and searching online to try and figure it out myself before I post, but I’m always faced with a “You’re so stupid for posting here.” vibe over there. I’ve experienced this same or similar behavior over at least a half a dozen attempts to get help with something. In my 20+ years of hosting experience, participating in countless communities, I have never experienced such an unwelcoming, hostile “help community”. What’s the deal?
Environments that have abandoned altruism, and where people’s primary interest has become showing off their knowledge, often become toxic. Punching “down” by implying (or saying outright) that another person is stupid is an extremely easy way for even low-skilled posters to pretend they’re one of the big kids. I bet that even if you laid out the vital pieces of a simple problem, they still wouldn’t be able to solve it.
Unfortunately, jerks also drive away more serious, experienced users who aren’t assholes. You’ve probably been insulted by immature trolls with little experience, and the knowledgeable people with helpful attitudes simply don’t have the patience to put up with that kind of behavior. They’ve either left or thought about it.
The easiest way to prevent this is with strict moderation, which the official Nextcloud help community clearly doesn’t have. Since the moderation issue is beyond your control, I can only suggest finding a better community for help. I wish you the best!