I have had my own mistakes pointed out if less than flattering/coddling ways.
I still do!
But I did fail at something, often simple and easy that I should have known better than.
I was given replies I couldn't ignore which is 100x better than no reply at all leaving me WRONG.
There are people who start out far less than nice and they do get called out on it.
BUT to try and make that into a forum vs newbies narrative is manipulative, controlling, and will lead to less actual help being given.
Any volunteers for moderators?
And so it goes.
When I see these kinds of threads, it's almost always from someone that discounts their own BS that they seem to expect others to eat and be polite to the point of telling them it tastes good. I don't need to be told to cater to that. I'm not here to be a social justice tool.
AFAIC, the title of this thread is a MEAN, HATEFUL, ARROGANT call to serve as someone's proxy.
I am considering to decline my candidature (thanks buddy, Adam says "no") due to the importance of reading "The Republican Citizen" and "The Prince" (by Niccolò Machiavelli)
Brosco:
There are also those (MOds included) that like bashing newbies. This has been the least friendly newbie forum I have ever used.
Respectfully Brosco, even young children have a defined progression from kindergarden, to elementary school, to middle school, to college prep. Within each classification, the student has responsibilities for growth both in social as well as educational areas.
Likewise, the forum has rules and ediquette which must be applied during forum engagement. Failure to follow the program is generally met with a reference to "read the stickies." Sometimes, the infraction meets with a stern approach from a senior member, sometimes from a Moderator. Consider this a slap on your little fanny to shape up - a kind of virtual corporal punishment. IMO, from the Moderators here are very helpful when approaching well articulated questions that have all of the required information and that adhere to forum requirements such as "code tags" and attaching your sketch.
If you do not like it, go buy a book on the Arduino and 'have-at-it'. If you wish to be a forum peer, then do your duty: research, attempt to solve your issue, articulate your intent, the observed issues, your environment (Linux, OSX, Win) GUI version, and attach your sketch - all of it. If you rely upon specific libraries, the # include should have a URL for the source. Provide the information in the proper format and you will enhance your chances for a professional reply.
But if you are asking for a solution to homework, are asking about an off limits technology (automobile automation), or just post to waste time, you are likely to be vIrtually spanked.
Yes there seems to be more meanies per unit area than many other forums. Also many of the reply's that might be considered mean or arrogant come from the high end posters rather than trolls. Go figure...
On the other hand, answers are given, information is provided. Have compassion for people who have a big fish in a little pond mentality and have to assert their superiority.... And post your code!
I'd rather stay ignorant of Arduino than ask for help here.
Easily done. But not very useful.
there seems to be more meanies per unit area than many other forums.
Hmm. I dunno. How are you defining "unit area"? In general, a badly asked question (well, ANY question) will get a lot more responses here than on many "more professional" forums. I have some outstanding questions that ought to be of the "the vendor should answer this" form, on supposedly vendor-run forums, that have been sitting for weeks without getting any answer at all.
Any posts that the writer is too lazy to proof read their work to fix basic spelling and grammar mistakes, invites less than considered response. I do not include those that English is obviously not their main language.
When you get a twenty line paragraph with few sentences and punctuation, all in lowercase, I don't feel that the OP has shown any respect to those he is asking for help.
Some posts expect us to work out what they are asking with minimal information, all expressed on confusing language.
Surely the OP should put a little effort into their question so we do not have to drag the information out of them.
More "newbies" would be happier if in fact the questions that did not invite a considered response simply did not get any response from the people who don't add anything other criticism of the question. At least until the question has say unanswered for a while. We have a few too many people who are VERY quick to jump on criticizing the question without seeing if it can get an answer anyway. (I've even answered a bunch of questions where the first few responses were "post ALL your code NOT snippets" when in fact the problem was clear from the snippet...)
OTOH, I think I've gotten really good at simply ignoring the questions that are (or should be) adequately answered by a dozen online tutorials or where the questioner is clearly so far behind that they won't understand the answer anyway. This IS a lot easier when you know there are other people willing to be "stern" about telling them off (and/or providing the useful data like "go read this tutorial.")
Anyone who complains about the friendliness here has never mentioned the word "Arduino" at AVRfreaks.
(And yes, I am a member there, and no, I've never had a problem)
Ok, here is a current issue. There is this unanswered question in the Guidance subform:
ketsayay:
Hi all, i got some error it says
error compiling avr-g++ missing filename after '
what's wrong with that?
(v 1.6.6)
I don't want to be mean, but how does the OP expect any useful help when only the error message (and only part of it at that) was shown. I almost replied:
me:
Obviously there is no filename after the single quote.
But that would be snarky. On the other hand it seems that asking for more information is not welcome either. (It's what, bullying?) So should we just ignore all questions that do not provide sufficient information, or that are not clearly stated so the asker is not made to feel bad by a non-helpful reply?
doughboy:
For starters, ban those users, I'm sure everyone knows who they are.
Brosco:
There are also those (MOds included) that like bashing newbies. THis has been the least friendly newbie forum I have ever used.
ellisras:
this one wins the newbie bashing oscar by a long chalk
I'm calling "bullshit" on these claims. Do you seriously, seriously, think that people who make 10000+ posts do it just for the amusement of newbie-bashing?
I think I might know a couple of people you are referring to. And usually the posts where they get a bit snarky are the ones where the poster hasn't taken the time to read the forum "stickies". They post code not in code tags. The thread subject is "help". They post in all caps. They don't post their code or their error messages. Then they take offence at being asked to post a better question.
You answer 20000 questions along those lines. If you keep going you will have developed a lot of patience. Because it is annoying when, time after time, the poster thinks their problem is so important that they don't need to take the time to explain it properly.
I get so many posts which clearly haven't read the forum posting guidelines that I have made an (Arduino) device that lets me press one button which puts out a nicely-worded request that they use code tags, or read the posting guidelines. Yes, it happens every day.
As for "least friendly" - to be honest, I think this is the most friendly forum I've been on. By all means try other ones. Then get back to us.
However bad people may be on this forum they are all pussycats compared with the unforgiving compiler
No... actually there was a study done at MIT a couple of years ago. 533 technical forums were polled aver a three month period. and the Arduino forum scored 8.343 meanies per unit area compared to an overall average of 5.7.
there was a study done at MIT a couple of years ago. 533 technical forums were polled aver a three month period. and the Arduino forum scored 8.343 meanies per unit area compared to an overall average of 5.7.
Nice thread.
It shows the people that keep wasting time by pointing to others to put the blame on for failing their attempts to learn, instead of actually learning.
