A piece about forums in general, but mainly this one.
Please note this is a long rant, but I'm in that kind of mood.
I have been active on this type of forum for many years.
I started on the excellent WHQuestion, now dead, and have been active on a lot of other sites.
Overall I have had a lot of fun and games and met some very fine people and had to put up with many idiots, flamewars and general stupidity.
What really gets me is the apparent inability of some users to follow even the most basic rules of etiquette when interacting with other people.
Small things like common courtesy, manners and respect are some of the things that come to mind. After all we all give our time and effort freely, but to be derided by, mostly forum newbies, is just plain bad manners.
While I'm on the subject of rules, simple ones like correct places to post. How hard is it to find the board you want and post a question? After all, the main index page has a whole list of available subjects.
Back to forum newbies, why is it that they feel that the use of English and punctuation are an optional extras.
This isn't a chatroom, speed isn't an issue, so why use chatspeek. Are they really so thick that a basic grasp of English is beyond them?
OK you can forgive grammar and spelling, we are all guilty of that one at some time, but the out and out laziness of chatspeek is beyond me.
It really doesn't help their cause or get their question resolved any more quick, as we have to spend time in translating their drivel into useable English. Some of our foreign users have a better grasp and it's a second, or even third, language to them.
Last couple of things I promise.
The ability to read what has gone before your post, both previous responses and mainly the posted dates. The most annoying thing is when an ancient thread is reopened by someone posting a response. How difficult is it to check the original date and whether the user has been online since? OK some feel they are helping, but please how does posting a response to two year old question really help.
While on posting, do they really believe that repeating the same question on ten different boards will get their question answered any more quick!
Bugger lost my train of thought now. Amuse yourselves for a moment while I try and regain it. Normal ranting will be resumed shortly.
I remember now, hackers, spammers and scammers. Come on are we really going to buy the next wonder penis enhancement pill just because you post it twenty times in two minutes. Are we going to send you our bank account number because you can give us an unlimited overdraft. Are we going to help you retrieve your webmail password just because you say it's your account.
Come on idiots what planet do you think we are from??
Rant over you may now return to real life.
A final thing to think on:
Why is Common Sense so uncommon?
So what really bugs you abot these kind of forums ?
Comment on Curlyben's post
Comment on Curlyben's post
I agree. The newbies "demading" immediate responses is fustrating.
Working in retail and fast food
I agree with all the rants here. It's pretty interesting though to note that, people in real life are quite often like this as well, and do a lot of the same things. Anyone who has worked retail or dealt with customers or the public will know what I'm talking about here.
For example, not reading signs or instructions... I used to work in a sandwich shop, and we would have big signs at the counter telling our customers various things such as, "The special is ONLY on the ham sandwich", "Please don't ask for parking change if you're not a customer", etc... And yet practically every day people would be asking for change, or asking to have a different sandwich substituted for the one on sale. My favorite (and unbelievably frequent!) question by customers was "How long is your 8-inch hoagie?" Ummmm... 8 inches?? :rolleyes: We also had a huge clock at the front counter, yet it was not uncommon for people to ask what time it was. Many people just don't pay attention.
People also tried to be dishonest a LOT. They would try to use expired coupons, coupons from another store, etc. And when you said they were expired, they would lie and say that they just got the coupon in the mail... but of course when you looked at the coupon, it was like, 2 years old or more! Or, people would try to say they knew the owner and that he was giving them a deal. And if they didn't get exactly what they wanted, no matter how courteous or helpful you were to them, they would be rude, condescending... horrible really.
So unfortunately, my conclusion is that people in general (not everyone of course, but many!) are just rude, don't bother to take the time to read directions, and expect everything to be just handed to them on a silver platter. And yes we are volunteers here, but even if we were paid something, that still doesn't excuse rudeness for a great answer given.