Be DIFFERENT! make good posts!

I'm new to Arduino and c++ programming. At first I thought I'd really found a pretty cool gizmo and usergroup. I'm confronted by a community that is worse than unhelpful. This forum, and published books written by some of it's big members, are bristling with trash. I could produce a huge post, full of screen captures, page scans, and links to errors, and I'm not talking simple spelling and typographic errors,,,, but I won't.

READ YOUR POSTS before you post them!!!!!!! Better yet, cut and paste it to your notepad, and post it a few hours later, or even the next day. Maybe I need to use larger, more universal terms; READ ANYTHING you write before you expose others to it.

I've dealt with computer and industrial documentation, programming, standards, codes, and forums since the early 1980s. I'm absolutely sickened by this crap. Hell, click "reference" at the homepage to find throbbing recklessness (I don't feel it's my place to pronounce it to be stupidity).

The people who most need to be hit over the head with this probably won't even read this, but maybe you don't yet see yourself as an "expert". There's hope for you. If you intend to write a beginners guide to ANYTHING, once you think you're done, have a couple beginners read it. Then beg them to explain your material to you, and make suggestions.

And if you find an error late, go correct it.

wiremanflash:
I'm confronted by a community that is worse than unhelpful.

Insulting millions of people. Good place to start.

READ YOUR POSTS before you post them!!!!!!!

Arduino Forum :: Using Arduino :: Programming Questions
Understanding the language, error messages, etc.

Oh, the irony.

I am confused by the rant, to be honest.

For my own clarity, are you flaming about the content of posts (mostly written by beginners or people learning), the spelling mistakes (of non english speakers, for the most part) or the books people write (which has probably nothing to do with this forum)?

My, my. That's tolerance! The fact is, not everybody in this forum writes exquisitely fine English, and some are not writing English as a first language. Also, I admit that sometimes I read posts that are so short of detail that I can't begin to know how to help the poster.

But I regard this as a learning club: we all start somewhere, and the very fact that our members are trying to spend their time doing something productive and exercising their brains, and in which I am personally very interested, is good enough for me. I'll pitch in and help when I can, even if the exposition isn't up to college English standards.

I suggest you start your own forum. As moderator, you can kick nearly everyone out, but you'll feel ever so proud of your own posts.

A reference to the quality of opinion, communication and technical assistance we should all aim towards -

Duane B

Umm.
Just to be clear, this is the Bar Sport forum.

And the link I posted is not a guide to anything at all but rather a link to the OPs recent posts, bar sport indeed.

Duane B

And if you find an error late, go correct it.

Hey, your not the boss on me!

Lefty

DuaneB:
And the link I posted is not a guide to anything at all but rather a link to the OPs recent posts, bar sport indeed.

Duane B

Cross post, I had not seen yours and was commenting on origional msg.

Umm.
Just to be clear, this is the Bar Sport forum.

Yeah, I moved it from Programming to here, because we don't have a Troll/Rant section on the forum (yet)

It would perhaps be useful if, when a mod moves a thread, the forum software automatically adds a message in the thread from the mod saying which group the message originally came from. It would then be clear to everyone that comments previous to that were posted when the thread was in a different forum.

Pete

el_supremo:
It would perhaps be useful if, when a mod moves a thread, the forum software automatically adds a message in the thread from the mod saying which group the message originally came from. It would then be clear to everyone that comments previous to that were posted when the thread was in a different forum.

Pete

And that adds value because?

retrolefty:
And that adds value because?

Reduces the embarrassment I'm suffering from my now non sequitur post. =(

LOL, I just now got here and I was scratching my head just a bit

But back to the main point. Zowie. I've also been around since the 80s (or so) and I don't think I remember a better forum. I think I can usually hold my own and keep out of trouble but some of the folks here are downright brilliant, with great depths of experience and knowledge. And helpful. This is the Internet so there is always the wheat and chaff thing; that should be a surprise to no one. But with the right filters, I'd say that a lot of what goes on here is better than much of what I saw in my professional career.

Bottom line, I'd have to agree with jrdoner -- In the spirit of open source, we're always happy to be shown how to do it better.

wiremanflash:
I'm new to Arduino and c++ programming.

If it had been me, then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have jumped to conclusions quite so fast.

At first I thought I'd really found a pretty cool gizmo and usergroup.

Correct on both counts.

... published books ...

I've only read one or two, and while I can certainly find issues, on the whole I've found them good. I cut the authors some slack as this is a relatively new and fast-moving arena.

yawn, another noob that is frustrated takes it out on a group of hobbiest nerds on how they are not experts, when they are in fact NOT EXPERTS

Hmmm, what's grinding your gears? Too many beers, Arduino won't work now?
Have a rant, get it off your chest, then come back to the forums. The documentation may not be great, however when you have not contributed to it, and get it provided for free, maybe the idea is to take what's given and go exploring once questions become unanswered. However the reference is compensated with the forum's large knowledgeable user base.

Like they say, "you can take a horse to water, but it may just get caught in a tree",

You had only 2 posts prior to your rant and yet you feel at home enough to insult hundreds of users? Ouch!

My native tongue is Portuguese, and even although I consider my English pretty good and I can hold a conversation (but not write) in Spanish, Italian and French, I am a bit offended by your post.

On the other hand, since this is an international forum, and the internet has lifted many borders, one should only appreciate the effort a non-English speaker is putting on trying to communicate to you, native English speakers. Not many people have the ability to easily learn a new language, but yet they are trying. I applaud these people: they are not afraid to show they are still learning. Perhaps their post tomorrow will be better: they might have learned a new word, or learned how to properly write whatever word they wrote incorrectly yesterday.

I think most of the posts in these forums are in English, but if there would be an "official" language for these forums, I am sure it would be Italian, because that's what the creators of the forums speak. If that was the case, how much effort would you be willing to put into learning Italian? Or would you just turn around and look for an Arduino forum in English, or maybe a more technical AVR forum?

My point is: don't take it for granted that you can use English here. Appreciate it, and appreciate the fact that others are willing to learn YOUR language just to learn more from you (not you specifically, but people much more knowledgeable than you that are very helpful in these forums).

I was in Argentina a couple weeks ago, and I noticed they are far more receptive to people who at least try to speak to them in Spanish, even if their Spanish suck. The same applies to anywhere in France: try being a tourist there without even knowing how to say 'merci beaucup' or 'bonjour', and they will spit on your coffee. So would I.

Being culturally-tolerant is important these days.

Now, about the technical aspects of your complaint, I partially agree with it. Most posters would have a higher chance of a quick answer if they just googled for it or used the forums' search feature. Everyday there are at least 10 questions on how to use a stepper or a servo. Besides, 90% of the Arduino books don't bring anything new to the scene: they all teach the same stuff over and over. That is not to mention the thousands of blogs that will teach you how to turn a LED on.

We have a code function which allows us to post code.
How about a rant on rant off function that users can set to ignore.
Poster gets the satisfaction of a good rant which the more sensitive of us do not have to see.

Well, I'll respond to a bit of this, because within just a few replies it seems that somehow the native tongue of forum users has somehow been brought in. I very much agree with much of what our friend from Brazil had to say. I will only post in English, because I don't feel my own fluency in another 2 languages I have used from time to time is adequate. For technical purposes such as forums like this, computerized translation is terribly inadequate. My complaints do NOT pertain to spelling or typographic errors, per se (as initially stated). However, if you post code you must check every character and space, or face the deserved ire of any readers. According to the documentation I've seen, c++ is the official language of Arduino, regardless of what human language it may appear similar to.

As far as "insulting a few million" goes, you should get your decimal places and orders of magnitude figured out, and, "if the shoe fits"......

A. Unless their signature posts says "Expert" or they indeed said something to the effect of "Look how brilliant i am" you should not care.

B. We don't run the forum or moderate it, however much you agree or disagree with someone here... (I see it as their loss if they fail to understand) we use a FREE service.

C. Spelling Nazi's yeah well they need something else to do, but as long as someone tries to explain it to the best of their ability, who cares, grow a thicker skin.

D. Did i mention this place is "FREE" to use, we don't pay the hosting, yet you get access to technical support/help 24/7 that to me justifys a handful of idiots.