Why are the Arduino forums filled with a lot of whiney old guys? I read good questions from the forum but I always see a lot of snarky replies. It’s the least helpful forum I’ve seen compared to stack overflow, github, others. I’m just wondering why the mentality is like that. It’s an Arduino... nothing for people to beat their chest to. It’s if anything a very small piece in a larger project. For those anal few, it’s ok to let small things fly... again it’s an Arduino.
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I'm sure you'll dismiss me as one of the "whiney old guys", but I'll still point out that Stack Overflow and GitHub are not forums, so it's simply not a valid comparison. Better would be something like avrfreaks, PJRC, Adafruit, or eevblog.
Ah! Another drive-by whinging.
I read good questions from the forum but
. . . also a lot of lazy, half-arsed ones too.
Anyone who can post on the forum has, literally at their fingertips, the greatest library the world has ever had.
GavinSchelske:
Why are the Arduino forums filled with a lot of whiney old guys? I read good questions from the forum but I always see a lot of snarky replies.
I think this is a common complaint, and it's definitely not limited to the Arduino forum. The "whiney old guys" tend to get a little testy after reading the same basic question for the thousandth time. What they sometimes forget is that the question is coming from the thousandth user, who needs guidance just as much as the first user did. So shame on the grouches for that; maybe they should consider taking a break.
But then there are also lots and lots of posters who have obviously put in zero effort to solve the problem by themselves, or even to find out how best to use these forums. Instead they take the lazy way out, expecting someone else to do all the work for them, and even read their minds. They'll ask clueless questions equivalent to "what kind of car should I buy?," which even a little forethought would reveal to be impossible to answer. In those cases, grouchiness and snarky answers are both expected and justified.
S.
It takes a conscious effort to hold the "WTH" comments back but is worth the effort.
Takes even more effort when you know first time users were shown the README and BEFORE they made thier first post but simply skipped it.
Also agree we do on occasion tend as older posters get a little nippy with the noobs and that too takes some self control.
Also don't forget that there are on many occasions talks in the background about noobs and posters behaviour as a whole that nobody ever sees. That often presents a chance to head things off before they get out of hand.
One of my own pet peeves is the random new user who usually has less than maybe 10 posts but those posts are not about an issue with thier project but pretty much a rant about the forum when they have clearly not even read up on things. Usually I suspect they are a lost TROLL on the way to find a bridge.
ballscrewbob:
Usually I suspect they are a lost TROLL on the way to find a bridge.
I love it. Gotta remember that one. 
srturner:
I love it. Gotta remember that one.
Yorkshireman first and English second so we are born with an abundance of sayings and sarcasm.
The board helps those who help themselves. This is not a hold your hand and sing kumbaya operation. this is not a let me copy your homework operation. this is a place for people who have studied and almost arrived where they need to be, but missed the mark because something could have been explained a little better. It's more like a military academy, and less like a basket weaving for world peace class, than other forums.
The OP isn’t wrong, you know.
I’ve been on a fair number of different forums (and platforms thereof) over the years, and am old enough to actually have participated in Usenet when Deja News was still a fairly new ‘front end’ to that portion of the Internet. I have even been an admin of a forum before turning over the reins to someone else who had the time and interest.
My experience on this forum stands alone from the rest.
I get that answering the same questions day in and day out gets grating after a while. Still, that doesn’t excuse the attitude given sometimes. Nobody’s forcing you regulars to be here, after all, right? You lot were newbies at one point, and you have clearly forgotten that.
While I haven’t gone looking for them again, I remember seeing and being annoyed by the stipulations regarding attachments and external links, and that this was basically the first time that I’d seen such rules actively discouraging the use of specific attachments (at least the way I interpreted such stipulations).
My annoyance over the existence of such stipulations may have influenced the tone of some of my posts, and which frankly wasn’t helped when I was told “New here? Be a good bloke and read the Forum 101 thread before continuing”. See paragraph 1.
As I got further into my now-stalled test equipment project, I had envisioned using Arduino to step in for some borderline unobtainable ICs used in the original design, and when it appeared the original processor that I had available to use in my project (a customized 6800 CPU originally developed for automotive applications) was dead, I then changed the scope to using Arduino as a replacement for the CPU and support ICs.
That entailed stepping outside my existing knowledge of programming and trying to get an understanding of C++ by seeing if and how I could translate the various assembly language mnemonic statements into similar instructions in C++. That is, until another regular told me to “slow my roll” and that “I was embrace [sic] myself with my questions”.
That was pretty much the moment I wound up binning the brand-new Nano I’d bought some time ago, and I plan to find and use a different hardware solution.
If I was already dealing with a bunch of two-bit w*nkers when trying to get an understanding of the hardware and software side of Arduino, then I figured it would be no better once I got closer to debugging and implementation on the hardware side.
I decide to stick my nose back in here one day and find that a new forum platform had been rolled out, and which is also used by another forum I look in on from time to time. Of course, the ones yelling the loudest were the regulars, bemoaning the loss of their prized ranks and badges as well as their oh so important post counts.
I then suggested that maybe this would put everyone back on the same level and maybe the regulars wouldn’t be so high and mighty. One regular wondered why they would want to treat everyone the same, and another regular told me I had only ever made X number of posts and that I had no right to make the comments I did.
So, no, the OP wasn’t wrong.
Nobody suggests the OP was wrong, but a lot of the new arrivals, buy a processor, plug it in to the USB port, and expect the board to do the rest.
If they make a small effort - not even formatting or code tags - we’re likely to help them, but barging in with -
“You guys are useless, my LED doesn’t blink when I press the button”
The second post is “ I copied the code, it doesn’t work, can you write it for me ?
Will get the to the second ‘strike’
That takes another few posts before the conversation degenerates, often wth cross-posting, and some vibrant feedback.
No pain.. It’s easy to ignore, and move on to a more deserving question… there are plenty.
I'm not a fan of post counts or karma/likes (I dumped an account here with tens of thousands of posts and thousands of karma points), but they at least provide an indication of stature.
The alternative is the script kiddies who "condense" about five minutes-worth of book reading/learning into a thirty minute YouTube video, with no on-going support or revision.
Elitism - it's not for everyone.
Of course, if you don’t like the conversation, the critics can go to THIS SITE for more robust, practical advice.
I would point people who think they get a tough ride here towards AVRfreaks, but I'm fundamentally opposed to blood-sports.
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I call BS as there were NO BADGES prior to the new forum so there were none to be lost.
Those were a NEW addition.
Also some new ranks were ADDED which also caused some minor confusion that's all.
Those parts were very minor in the whole thing.
A lot of us spent time trying to get actual bugs under control by reporting them.
There is a lot of "woe is me" in your post which I would normally attribute to a millenial or people of that ilk.
If you were asked to read a "README" there is a very very good chance you post was lacking some quite basic info and reading the readme would have no doubt been of benefit to you.
Who are you calling a whiney old guy ?
Sorry, had to give you a heart for that 
Just wonder if this is now better off in BAR SPORT ?
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