Can I ask why some of the Administrators on this Forum appear to be very blunt when answering questions from new Arduino users?. To the point I find some of them quite rude and obnoxious.
I have a question for these Admins - How many of you are Aeronautical Engineers, work for NASA or are a Molecular Biology Scientist?.
If this was something you were interested in and wanted to learn, would expect the people who asked the questions too to reply in the way that some of you do?
A little help goes a long way, and just because you are proficient in the art of Arduino Programming dent mean you are better than anyone else on this forum. I expect quite a few people on here have better jobs and are higher paid than you.
So come on guys, please treat everyone with the same respect you would expect to receive.
Rant is OK but would be better with clear examples.
Quite often the OP does not do the bare minimum to get an answer, does not care about recommendations (How to get the best out of this forum) or has unrealistic expectations and is quite determined s/he is entitled to a fast complete answer… usually those threads do not end well here.
They are blunt when answering new forum users who have not read the forum guide.
As a new forum user, if you post before you have read the forum guide, and as a result, you break forum rules, then you are being rude and obnoxious, and don't deserve to be treated any other way.
I appreciate your concern about rudeness on the forum. When you refer to 'administrators' are you also referring to moderators? Or also to ordinary forum members who contribute regularly to the forum? Without examples your rant might make you feel better but it won't improve anything.
I suggest that when you find a reply you consider to be 'quite rude and obnoxious' you flag it to the moderators. The response you get will depend on the content of the reply you flag and which moderator sees the flag: we do not speak with one unified voice on all things.
Thank you.
Edit.
Posting examples here in public would probably be inappropriate. If you have an example you want my opinion on feel free to send me a PM with a link and a comment.
You can ask ... Truth is not all Moderators and other commentators have good didactical skills, although usually they can be quite helpful with suggestions and ideas, there is a sense of arrogance and a 'you are dumb !' reactions.
A lot of the newbies do not adhere to forum rules and recommendations which at times can result in quick and undiplomatic reactions.
A lot of people that come for here for help do not read what is being said and have a 'you don't understand' attitude,
This is turn results in a response from people etc etc.
At times people should learn to sit on their hands and read before they respond.
Users should also provide the feedback when their issue is resolved with 'our' help or their own, but this does not happen very often.
All in all this is all rather common in a lot of forums and this is not the worse forum i have encountered, although there are some differences between the different language parts (the Dutch section is really friendly !)
As in all other parts of life, ignore what you don't like, report that which is clearly crossing a line of decency or a personal attack. Read well, use code tags, provide as much information as possible and Google first !!
The rant came from reading other peoples posts, mainly new members who have posted questions and being new to Arduino obviously don't know what is needed to be included in the post in order for someone to actually try and help.
Rather than an Admin or Moderator (Sometimes just marked from System) asking for the information needed and how to get it too, they just reply with go and do this or read this or that, which to be honest is no help at all.
Remember when you were at School, College or University, you were not just told to go and read something to try and learn it, the teacher or lecturer would explain it and how to get to solve the problem.
It would just be nice to see more actual help in the replies than some of the in my opinion rude comments and directions. Sometimes a=it appears that the Admin or Moderator is trying to belittle the person asking for help.
You say that are blunt and rude because they have not read the Forum Guide.
Where is the Forum Guide exactly, as there is no Forum Guide on the Home Page, F.A.Q.s or about page!
So if your new to Arduino and the Forum how do you expect them to find it and read it?
This should be the first thing a new user should see on the home page in BOLD Letters
To a point I even find your response a little bit obnoxious, telling me if they break the so called forum rules you have the right to talk to them like they are lowest of the low, which I don't believe for one minute is what you are really saying. But all said NO ONE has the right to be RUDE or OBNOXIOUS to anyone who comes on this forum for help.
If the user is rude when asking a question or in a reply, then an administrator should simply advise them or ban them.
Saying that they should also ban or block moderators who answer questions in a read and unjust way.
I totally agree that some people do go off on one without thinking of what they are saying, and I know how frustrating it can be sometimes when dealing with people who don't understand the basic principles, but we should all remember we were there once upon a time, totally new without a clue.
When the forum was migrated from using the SMF forum software to the Discourse software, all the posts made by various community users with deleted accounts were transferred to the @system user. This is a machine account used by the Discourse software for various maintenance operations.
So you should not consider a normal post made by the @system user to be in any way associated with the forum management. In fact, the reason some of the accounts that previously owned those posts were deleted is because the forum member had a long term pattern of writing unfriendly posts.
If you see a post you think is unacceptable, you are welcome to click the icon under the post to bring it to the attention of the moderators. Please only flag the clear-cut cases of abusive behavior rather than in cases where you only think the tone is slightly negative.
My experience - and I have read tens of thousands of posts here - has been that usually the way OP handles the first comments drives how the thread evolves.
If OP did not follow the guidelines, he is usually directed to such guidelines / recommendations (please check How to get the best out of this forum) and expected to course correct.
Yes, I do remember being at school, and initially being only a couple of pages behind the teacher in learning about programming.
Then, moving on to higher education, I had much more experienced academic staff to teach me.
What we didn't have (because Tim Berners-Lee was still at university) was a vast teaching resource literally at our fingertips, so we took baby-steps developing our code, and our tutors would patiently help debug.
If we pitched up with a problem they'd helped us with before, or they felt we hadn't put in sufficient effort, we'd be put on the (de)Buggers Blacklist.
Think about this, someone posts a question but they do not include much or any relevant information so no one can help. So a helper has to type things like 'post your code and your schematic and, and and, and, and...'. Always the same basic things. Why would you expect a helper to keep typing those things over and over? Obviously they don't want to. How is that better than posting a link to an introductory tutorial that includes all that stuff? I really don't understand the objection.
Seriously? It's in the top of every forum section. Not only that but you only have to read a few forum topics to see a link to it. So, if someone really has not seen it then they have made no effort to research anything. If they had typed in their problem to the search thingy they would have probably found some (possibly) relevant topics, and if they read those topics there's a good chance they'd have seen a link to the forum guide.
Now I will agree that the forum guide could be made to stand out better, but if there's a way to do that I've yet to find it.
Finally
Please remember the helpers are volunteers giving up their free time to help, not trained and paid teachers.
Double finally
To my knowledge one person I have dealt with on here is a retired space craft designer and his last project was a NASA space craft I had heard of and knew about. There is at least one person here who regularly contributes who has been involved in satellite design.
Yes, and it rankles me when they whine, considering that. Because then
the free advice they get is less a gift and more a graft, since they could probably afford to pay for it
sometimes they will actually profit from it financially, while I get nothing
their incompetence floods the market with an acceptance of substandard engineering and skews the skill set towards social engineering, greatly reducing the market value of my functional skills.
I greatly enjoy sharing my knowledge and love of electronics and computing with sincere, earnest people who take the time to understand the instructions and advice that they are offered. It doesn't matter to me how inexperienced they are. I clearly remember what it was like to start out.
I do in fact already have an online business. You're too late.
I don't pretend to know everything about the subject, I think the problem now is that people get their guidance from what are essentially social media sites. I will not name them but everyone here knows what they are. However, I have about 50 years experience in electronics, 30 in computing, an EET cert and a BA, 16 years diverse work experience in the field of electronics manufacturing. I could go on about my independent work, but it could get boring.
The fact that people might get substandard advice from a forum like this, is a small reason why I'm here.
I have said before, I will say it again.
What you take from the forum, is equal to what you bring to the forum.
I believe your observations are "cherry picked". If you go to my profile and start reading threads, you should see that in cases where the poster was cooperative and forthcoming, an appropriate solution or several were supplied, either by myself or by someone else, without very much drama. I have a very high solution rate. If I didn't achieve that, I really would quit the game.
I suggest you also do the same for a few other people who you have identified as vexatious. I think you might be surprised at how much the outcome of any inquiry is fixed by the tone and content of the requesting messages. Not, the behaviour of "moderators" or the volunteers that reply.
I don’t think so but I don’t see how this is relevant. Is it because someone makes more money than you that they are entitled to misconduct?
Overall the initial claim in This thread lacks clear examples. I’m not saying it’s a perfect place, but in my opinion fair requests raised by people willing to get somewhere and roll up their sleeves along the way get a lot of help, and it’s true those with a negative attitude, entitlement expectations or not respecting the netiquette, guiding principles for engaging in the forum and the volunteers giving away their time get usually a cold shoulder.
Links to examples where someone was genuinely engaged, offered answers to questions and has been handled inappropriately would be useful to document your case.
There is room for improvement, I agree with philipedwards.
When the Arduino board is new and the coding is new and the Arduino IDE is new for someone, then this forum website is just another thing that is new and unknown. Dropping a question without going on a quest to investigate how this forum works is normal.
A new user (without knowing the rules) should be welcomed.
When someone enters a pub and did not get a drink because he/she is not wearing a tie, then that person does not come back to that pub.
@anon57165952 Replying to a message does not work well on this forum. We use the general Reply button at the bottom. When answering a question, you can select some text with the mouse and then click "Quote". Then you get something like this:
See ? You learned something about the forum and I was not rude. I totally agree with you that a little help goes a long way
icon under the post to bring it to the attention of the moderators. Please only flag the clear-cut cases of abusive behavior rather than in cases where you only think the tone is slightly negative.