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I have several canned comments that I use repeatedly, with some edits. See below.

Is this in accordance with the AskUbuntu Way, or should I refrain?

Here they are:

Telling us which remote procedure (RP) you "followed" doesn't help us help you for N reasons: 1) It's remote. Will the link exist tomorrow? 2) Reading the RP doesn't tell us how accurately you "followed" it. Did you suffer typos or missed lines? We have. 3) Reading the RP omits the error messages you got on your system. These error messages (and the commands that caused them) are key elements in any diagnosis.


Do not post the whole log file! 99+% of the log entries are not of interest. Use an editor (on a copy of the file), and keep ONLY the error entries, plus 2 lines before and 2 lines after. You should end up with a max of 50 lines, and probably fewer than 50. Edit your question to add information, and use the formatting tools. Comments are for US to ask YOU to improve your Question, to help us help you.


AskUbuntu (this site) is all volunteers. We answer (for free) questions about Ubuntu. Canonical, a for-profit company packages and releases Ubuntu. They've not the same.


By posting a picture of text, you make it impossible for potential helpers on phones, or text terminals. to see your text. Rather, copy and paste the text into your Question, select it and use the {} formatting tool.


Please edit your post to add new information, properly formatted. Information added via comments is hard for you to format, hard for us to read, ignored by AskUbuntu's indexing system, and ignored by future readers. Please click [edit] and add that vital information to your question so all the facts we need are in the question. Please don't use Add Comment, since that's our uplink to you. All facts about your system should go in the Question with [edit]


That's all so far

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Since new users don't have the privilege to comment anywhere except on their own questions, answers to their questions, and their own answers, suggesting that the system considers it important to allow them to comment there, I don't agree with advising people not to use the Add Comment button. While it's true that many of the requests we make in comments on a question are best responded to by an edit, I suggest instead couching them in a phrase that actually requests an edit, like

Please [edit] your question and add the output of command and command. When you do that, please copy the text from the terminal and format it as code.

Even if you have to make that request more than once, or if the OP misses it and posts the entire output of sudo apt update in 6 unreadable comments*, it is better than incorrectly informing them that they should not comment at all.

There are certainly occasions when a comment from the OP may be more appropriate than an edit, especially if the comments are not very helpful...

Have you tried toggling the blabbler widget? - user A

@userA Actually I'm not trying to blabble, what I want is to worble, as mentioned - OP


*PS, when stuff like that actually happens, I suggest flagging the post for mod attention asking for the comments to be fixed, because mods can access the markdown of comments including their original line breaks, and delete the comments after pasting the output into the question with proper formatting, saving everyone considerable frustration.

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  • One could Edit the Question and add "Toggling the blabber widget is not my goal I'm trying to worble. Does blabber control worbling?", couldn't one?
    – waltinator
    Sep 20, 2020 at 22:01
  • @waltinator one could. Perhaps my example is bad. But one shouldn't have to resort to editing to dismiss every unhelpful comment. "Try x" shouldn't be in the comments anyway :)
    – Zanna Mod
    Sep 21, 2020 at 0:49

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