whats with the attitude

Hey all,
I've been browsing around here for a long time just as reference but finally decided to register for an account so i could post.
But as i get more in to these forums, I notice a lot of people have an attitude, including some of the moderators!
WTH?
This is a forum for a product that's main purpose is to be easy to work with as a learning tool. And yet a lot of newbies come here with little knowledge and get a dose of attitude. this is supposed to be a friendly community, not a hostile one. If you feel you may be one of these people I would suggest leaving your arrogance at the log-in screen. no one cares who you are or what you do for a living, we are all here to learn, not be put down. this isn't a competition.
So I would like to see a change in this aspect of the forums. it is totally noticeable and doesn't reflect well on the community.

Comments, opinions, complaints? not trying to start a flame thread but this just needs to be brought up. do not bring up any names or specifics. if you have a real problem PM a moderator or administrator with the information. positive reinforcement is better then negative.

The behavior you're describing is for the most part due to the fact that new members do not read or try to find their problem before posting a question.
They do not use the search, and they do not try to find existing threads that might be about their problem.
They also do not read the manual on how to use the board, even though that is on top of every section of the forum.
It is frustrating to see this happening, even though you're (the moderators) doing all you can to prevent this.
And that's when people start getting grumpy (not naming names here !).

You might be one of these people as this has been explained before, but i'll be glad to explain again.

Comments, opinions, complaints?

It does get a bit irritating to see the same questions over and over again, from people who apparently won't read the reference material, won't bother to search for similar questions asked in the past, didn't read the "Read this before posting ..." sticky message at the top of the sub-forum, and seem to have unrealistic expectations about how much hand-holding they can expect from the legions of unpaid volunteers that answer most of the questions in the forums.

You can double that irritation if it looks like they're looking to have their schoolwork done for them. And re-double if it seems like they having been bothering to attend the classes associated with that schoolwork.

And double the irritation again if the original question comes in with it's own "attitude" and clueless blame-placing.

"I thought Arduino was supposed to be easy to use. Why couldn't they use a real language instead of this broken Arduino compiler that can't even implement easy data structures like stacks. I have push(sp, int), but it's not working; can someone give me working code for stacks by thursday?"

Now personally, I pride myself on my ability to simply ignore irritating questions. But that does reduce my post count, and it is sometimes really difficult.

I can understand the points both of you bring up. but I should bring up that this is a community for non professionals to come seek ideas and help. The reference material isn't always good at explaining things when you don't speak the language (engineerinese) and you need someone to help you understand it, it is also difficult to search for topics that have relevance to your situation when you aren't even sure where to look. all of this can be very frustrating for a new member which may lead to the attitude in the OP.

I will refer you to the article online about the difference between "Customer and employee" just replace customer with newbie and employee with experienced forum goer. Even if you aren't paid and volunteer your time here, you are here to help with progress. the information here and resources here are invaluable to some. consider all this before going off on someone for posting.

if i see a topic re post i usually just direct them to the previous topic and explain where they can find the information. its just common courtesy.

If you really wanna see "attitude" - go over to the AVRFreaks forum, and ask a question regarding the Arduino - just to see what happens...

:wink:

I will refer you to the article online about the difference between "Customer and employee"

But you didn't. :wink:

SargentSeven:
I can understand the points both of you bring up. but I should bring up that this is a community for non professionals to come seek ideas and help. The reference material isn't always good at explaining things when you don't speak the language (engineerinese) and you need someone to help you understand it, it is also difficult to search for topics that have relevance to your situation when you aren't even sure where to look. all of this can be very frustrating for a new member which may lead to the attitude in the OP.

Sure it can be hard to find some help you need.
But then you are the one in need of that help, coming in with an attitude and offending any users who would otherwise help doesn't help you getting that help.
So read the manual for the forum before crying for help.
Use that information to ask a clear question with all information needed to get answers.
What's so hard about that ?
There will be no attitude back if you just halfway try to do this, and you will be pointed to the missing information.

I will refer you to the article online about the difference between "Customer and employee" just replace customer with newbie and employee with experienced forum goer. Even if you aren't paid and volunteer your time here, you are here to help with progress. the information here and resources here are invaluable to some. consider all this before going off on someone for posting.

You don't seem to know why i'm here.
I'm here to learn.
And i have found out i can learn a lot by having a look at other people's questions and trying to answer them.
I might not always come up with the right answer or even the right direction, but that's what i learn from.
Then comparing between customer / employee and newbie / other members doesn't fly.
Recently there was some member demanding the community to satisfy his needs as if he was at some service desk of a warehouse where he bought some device and had trouble connecting all wires.
There are people demanding the forum or site to work the way they would like it demanding some administrator to change it within 1 day.
Those are people who don't bother and/or care how stuff works.
The forum is a piece of software that was not created by the administrators over here.
They have to work with what is available (and do so in their time off work).
Some members do not understand that, while demanding certain functionality.
That's just unrealistic.

if i see a topic re post i usually just direct them to the previous topic and explain where they can find the information. its just common courtesy.

That assumes you have seen the original topic and know its entire content.
There's a difference between that and knowing the issue has been discussed several times.

There is no such thing as a stupid question, people here are happy to answer even the most basic of questions without attitude. However there is such a thing as a stupid way of asking it, in fact many stupid ways, this is a list of my most unfavorite ways they can ask:-

  1. Asking to just supply code and making it very clear they are not interested in actually learning.
  2. Just saying "i got a ZER218 board but it doesn't work when I connect it up" - note he assumes everyone knows what a ZER218 board is and knows what he has done in connecting it up.
  3. Saying "the code doesn't work" and not saying what it does.
  4. Asking a question, receiving an answer and saying "no that's not the problem" without saying why they think that.
  5. Keeping secret vital information about the system, like not even saying what model of Arduino they are using.

Ans so on.

I usually try hard to help people with a genuine, clearly-stated problem. For example, an interrupt not working in conjunction with Timer 1 but it works with Timer 2. Especially if the poster posts code, properly formatted, as politely requested in the forum "sticky" at the head of each posting section. And also if (as requested) the poster explains what s/he observed to happen, and contrasts that to what s/he expects to happen.

On the other hand, a post titled "NOOB NEEDS HELP" which goes along the lines of "I need to code for a line-following robot BY TOMORROW. URGENT! I know nothing about electronics or programming" is likely to get short shift. These are people who are trying to get their homework (which they left till the last minute) done by someone else.

A couple of the long-time posters can be a little terse with people, but after all, when for the 20th time in one day they are asked to solve a problem with either no code supplied, or code half in italics and smiley-faces (because they didn't use code tags) well I have to sympathize a bit.

I have seen other forums a lot more terse than this one. For example, threads get summarily locked with a comment "duplicate of post #123523, thread locked".

Also the moderators have to put up with a constant flood of spam, with very inadequate tools for dealing with spammers. I won't go into details, but suffice to say it can be pretty annoying.

And as Grumpy_Mike said above, sometimes we get up to page 2 of a thread before we have extracted from the poster, with great effort, what board they are using, what code they are using, the debugging output we can see their code must be producing but which they don't think is relevant to post, the exact part number they are interfacing with, in what way, etc.

One other thing to remember is that responses to original questions may also take the form of questions, as a form of triage, the approach being that sometimes the question will jog a response in someone who may know the answer but just needs to be reminded of it and pointed in the right direction.

Alternatively, the original poster may offer up further observations about their particular difficulty.

Or, they may just throw up their hands and say "I don't know".
All of these are useful.

What is not useful is the "this product is crap, I've been a particle physicist for three centuries and I've never seen such bollocks" rant.

AWOL:
What is not useful is the "this product is crap, I've been a particle physicist for three centuries and I've never seen such bollocks" rant.

I have seen that a few times here,
All of these are valid points, but on the exact opposite there are times when i witness someone posting a question, following most if not all the guidelines. where the problem may be simple but there are conflicting views and the reply is
"Well you must be def, dumb and blind, the answer is right there in front of you numb nuts." with out any kind of solution or real help. Or even better, when the OP has some experience and is looking for a second opinion but the other person comes on with a very arrogant and belittling response. I have witnessed these in numerous posts, this included a moderator.

that's the kind of attitude I'm talking about. its the kind of response that is irrational, as if someone was having a bad day and took it out on another poster.
I'm sure some of you have seen these as moderators, they don't always get seen but I know it happens.
I just wouldn't expect that on the official Arduino forum, its not like this is a private forum.

BTW, I started this topic here to bring up this stuff in a separate area, instead of bringing it up on the posts were i see this stuff happen, that way it doesn't divert the OP topic on those threads, This is better then derailing a topic due to one persons rude behavior.

"Well you must be def, dumb and blind, the answer is right there in front of you numb nuts."

I have never seen a post like this. Can you provide a link to substantiate this?

Grumpy_Mike:
I have never seen a post like this. Can you provide a link to substantiate this?

Not off hand no, I would have to dig through the forums I've been through the last year and a half to find them. But if one pops-up I will be sure to link to that thread or notify a mod. they do pop up often though so that shouldn't be hard.

Believe me though I'm not BSing my way through this, I wouldn't spend my time to post this if i didn't see a problem.

Are you sure that is what was written, or is it what you read ?
These 2 seem to be the same, but you would be surprised to see how often one reads something completely different from what was written.
This is particularly valid when discussing coding, because another punctuation or such can make a lot of difference (compare = to == for instance).
Dealing with people that have a lot of different native languages can enlarge such problems.

Remember that the focus of this site is on learning.
And one will not learn by someone else doing your exercises.
So hinting to the solution instead of handing over a completely worked out sketch and schematics is what you will see over here more often than at other sites.
Someone who really wants to learn will have not a lot of trouble with this and should be happy (s)he is helped this way.

Lets not forget that there are a lot of people here that are like myself that are not doing a class assignment but instead are learning on their own time as a hobby or as a future career, like myself.
What I read was what was written, that quote was taken straight out of the post verbatim. I wish I had a link to the thread because I can't find it now. its been a while.
I don;t come on here THAT often, maybe 2 times a week, because I have a full time job as an electrician. I still come here on those days and see 1 or 2 threads with some kind of snarky comment or some form of name calling. i've been on more often the last week because I've been off work. too much time on my hands. Otherwise, I usually just go about my day...

I can partially affirm S7's concerns. There is one person, who hangs out in only a few sections, who comes across as being quite rude to those who are honestly seeking valid help. I do not believe this person intends to be offensive, rather I think he fancies himself as a "witty curmudgeon". However, to those who do not know him, and even to some of us who do, his style simply comes across as rude and off-putting. I will not name this person publicly, as (s)he appears to be well respected in this community, and public naming would only create a "wall of defensiveness". However, if a moderator or someone in authority wishes, I will pass along the name privately.

@microcat: You'll no doubt have noted your "witty curmudgeon"s karma count, and how often he stays with a problem when others, myself included, have got bored with a thread.

Yeah, I knew I would regret making that post, but... Oh well, c'est la vie!

SargentSeven:

Grumpy_Mike:
I have never seen a post like this. Can you provide a link to substantiate this?

Not off hand no, I would have to dig through the forums I've been through the last year and a half to find them.

Well I did three Google search for arduino: followed by the three following lines all in inverted comers
the answer is right there in front of you
numb nuts
def, dumb and blind

The only match I found was your post.
A widening of the search showed that the term "numb nuts" has been used on the AVR Freakes forum to describe us:-

And, right, I brought to the Arduino Artsy Fartsy crowd, the old fashioned Fartsy Fartsy perspective. And, just to be fair, if you look at the level immediately below the 'For Dummies' top layer of Arduino, you'll see some very good programming. The guys who came up with this really know what they are doing with C, C++, and Java. IMHO it is nearly a miracle of software engineering to build something as numb-nuts-newbie friendly as they have, without also blocking the ability to go deep.

But if one pops-up I will be sure to link to that thread or notify a mod. they do pop up often though so that shouldn't be hard.

So I think you might be misremembering. But if one does poop up please quote it here on this thread so we can all see it.