[META] How to effectively ask for help with Guix?

[Ben Weinstein-Raun <root@benwr.net>]

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Hello!

I notice that I haven't been able to get much help with Guix, via any
route. Having asked six or seven questions[^1] over the last three weeks
(on this list, on the subreddit, and on the IRC channel), I've received
help with only one of those problems (thanks nckx!). Ultimately I've
cobbled together crappy solutions to my problems over that time, but a
couple knowledgeable responses could have saved me dozens of hours.

I'd love to wholeheartedly recommend Guix, because technically speaking
I much prefer it to Nix, and to the "classic" alternatives. I'm hugely
grateful that it exists! Of course it's nobody's responsibility to
answer beginner questions! But at the moment, I'm going to need to give
a big caveat with any recommendation: "The Guix documentation is
relatively high-quality, but if you want to understand anything that
isn't explained there, you should expect to dive much deeper than you
would with most tools, as it's quite hard to get any engagement fr
om
people who know the answers to your questions."

One possibility is that there just aren't many people who know those
answers. If that's true, then there's not much to be done. Another is
that I've gone about this wrongly somehow, in which case I'd love to
know how I could do better (in reply to this message is great, though I
also have an anonymous feedback form you can use, if you want to be
really ruthless :-) https://forms.gle/8fYoiNedq2g4UTPj8). And another
possibility is that I've just been unlucky, either with timing, or with
the particular questions I've wanted to ask.

Anyway, what, if anything, could I be doing better? I've read and try to
follow the advice at http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html,
but it's been a while and it occurs to me that I should refresh myself.
What else?

Thanks for any meta-help!

[1]
- https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2023-12/msg00123.html
- https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2023-12/msg001
60.html
- https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2023-12/msg00164.html
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/GUIX/comments/18mimv0/user_services_that_run_on_startup/
- https://logs.guix.gnu.org/guix/2023-12-16.log#003630


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