There are two types of people, those who make their world a very large place to live, and those who make their worlds very small. Ones actions will determine how big your world will be.

 

Nicely put Matt...

 

Actually I remember when I first got into simming proper, that was a relatively short time ago, my first forum was Aerosoft's and there was a guy there who seemed to think he had the right to come down on me for asking the simplest of questions. My reaction was to almost finish with the forum and go elsewhere. It was only by someone sending me a PM and explaining that not everyone acts like that and I should ignore him as he is known for being a complete dickhead. I have returned several times and found him to be a sad individual who seems to be more intent on trying to show how clever he is with his words than he is in helping anyone, he is of course the worst type of character. In fact I'm sure many of you know who I'm talking about. Anyway, I'm glad I did hang around this hobby as I have made some great virtual buddies and also several in the RW. It is a wonderful hobby and I agree with everything that has been said.

 

BTW, It just occurred to me, I really hate it when some guys simply reply with a 'Google it' reply. I've never really got this argument. If you follow this mode of thought then there would be no need for a forum! I always like to think the forum is a bit like having some beers with your mates. I'd be a bit peaved if everytime I asked a question at the bar I was told to go elsewhere and find an answer! Of course some questions can very easily be answered with a quick search, but then again the nature of a forum is to engage with other like minded individuals and ask questions. What one person sees as being a question that has been asked repeatedly, doesn't necessarily mean that same question has been seen asked by the newbie.

Having some random stranger howling at you about what an idiot you are after you enthusiastically ask a simple question kind of sticks with you. Especially when time proves him so absolutely wrong, despite all of his supposed "Knowledge" and experience.

+1

 

Maybe I have PTSD! (Forum Edition)  :blink:

Ha ha! I think we've all got a bit of that!

 

The people who imply that those objecting to the Forum Bulls are just 'thin skinned' have missed the point IMHO. Communicating and responding in a rude or intolerent way is what it is .... it doesn't matter how thick skinned or thin skinned the person on the receiving end is.

 

If you look at those people who ask the 'wrong' question and who get a post full of abuse, arrogance and anger thrown at them, and who then reply "Oh sorry X, yes I should have known that, thanks for clarifying that" etc...... are they the thick skinned ones? .... because I just see them as weak and submissive; standing down and bowing to the Forum Bull, when it wasn't appropriate to do so.

 

The point being raised here, (about rude, aggressive, arrogant people) has been made by thick skinned people IMHO .... they've had the kahunas to raise the point, and to get the flack from the usual bullish "hey we're all guys, we can be mean and cocky right... that's what makes us manly..." :rolleyes:

Simple answer: Human nature.

 

Good topic, and I think everyone should remind themselves that sometimes it is better to leave the topic alone and move on instead of acting like a monkey at the keyboard.

The people who imply that those objecting to the Forum Bulls are just 'thin skinned' have missed the point IMHO. Communicating and responding in a rude or intolerent way is what it is .... it doesn't matter how thick skinned or thin skinned the person on the receiving end is.

 

I don't mean to say that it is correct to stand down when directly confronted with a bad attitude. If you need help and I don't care if you are the 10E+20th person to ask the same question, you don't deserve to be verbally beaten to a pulp.

 

When I wrote that remark about being thin-skinned, I was thinking about several threads where an individual took offense to a hint of sarcastic humor. Several times these threads erupted into a huge fire and were locked. Those are the types I am referring to. In many of those cases, the one offended wasn't even participating in the thread up to that point. I've seen this on several forums outside of AVSIM too.

 

Whenever a thread gets a little rise in my blood pressure, I don't click Reply! Instead I open Notepad or some other text editor and type a response into there. I walk away from it and then come back to proof read and edit it. If at that point I still feel like it is worth posting, then I post it. Most of the time I trash these replies without posting them, it just isn't worth feeding the fire.

 

 

 

and I think everyone should remind themselves that sometimes it is better to leave the topic alone and move on instead of acting like a monkey at the keyboard.

Exactly!

 

 

I've had my fair share of people who just enjoy bad mouthing others, but I think of those people who use their criticism as a form of power. They have a void in their life and they get off on critisising others.

Quite surprised  didn't  you earlier  did the same thing to a dev in another  thread earlier  on :Thinking:

Really I think FS and Avsim especially has one of the nicest communities that I've seen so far, just look at pretty much any mainstream gaming "community" to find way more rudeness. 

The reason we have forum bulls is becuase you have the certain breed of noob that asks that one question that has been beaten to death in the previous 100 threads without bothering to do a basic search, sometimes they ask the same question over and over after blatently disregarding a sticky that addresses the issue in the first place. Yes sometimes forum bulls go over the top but IMHO they are a necessary evil to keep the dead horse from being beaten to a watery pulp.

 

Nobody's forcing anyone to give an answer, though. Much simpler and pleasant for everyone concerned is for the "bull" to see a "What is the best ____ " thread and think to himself "Nothing for me to see here", assuming he can't bring himself to type a civil and helpful answer. Is it arrogance that makes him think that if he doesn't answer it himself then nobody else will? Better for him to leave someone else to answer the question and go and read another thread. Or...do some flying? Personally I suspect it's more about one-upmanship than a crusade against wasteful posts. I mean, if you're not paying for the storage or the bandwidth then who cares what questions people post?

 

In any case, some questions are worth repeating. If someone posted in January this year asking for advice about say, the best turboprop, then any answers they received are now out of date, since during that time Aerosoft's new Twin Otter and Majestic's new Dash-8 (oh alright then...Q400 :smile:) have been released, both of which are game-changers. The range of choices changes and because of that, even the same old questions can elicit different responses.

 

Final thought...if a forum bull treats newbies like cr@p, doesn't that make him a bull5h1tter? Heh, heh...

 

What is really odd are the developers that get rude, short, or just do not reply at all. (Coders usually have zero people skills)

 

In every business customers (or potential customers) always ask questions that may seem redundant or inane.

 

I know our business gets asked things that would make simmers minds go nuts. And we work with DOD and defense contractors - the smart guys..?

Like a recent client that still uses IE 8 and he runs a multimillion dollar defense contracting business (with technology in the business name) and refuses to update past Vista…. It would be really stupid to actually tell him what I think about that. Instead I patiently work through it with him.

Or Navy pilots that are in charge of multimillion dollar jets that cannot attach a file to an email…

We get asked the same questions every day.

 

I do agree different parts of the world and country have different ways of conversation that can be misinterpreted as being rude.

 

"Character is much easier kept than recovered."

How come nobody mentioned language barrier? I don't have a link to the thread, but a while ago I came across a thread posted by a non English speaker, he phrased his problem politely, and it didn't take long for two people to start their replies with lines amounting to you didn't read the manual did you? That the topic starter stated that he struggled to follow the manuals because his first language was Japanese did not buy him any grace. I sometimes get the feeling that for some, one is never truly part of this community until one has had the opportunity become part of the RTFM brigade. I find it somewhat contradictory that one would feel justified in thinking that someone else is being lazy in not reading the manual, while at the same time one, one does not feel oneself lazy for not stopping to consider that there are reasons other than laziness at play for someone to ask a question that 1)has been asked to death, 2) is addressed in the manual.

 

I am not suggesting that everyone who gets impatient with repetitive questions does this, not that everyone who poses an already asked question does so from language issues, but I do think that we are too quick to jump on the this character is lazy and should have done their homework bandwagon.

Hi.

 

I've often wondered what causes the rudeness and now think there are two sorts of bull. There are all the ar**holes who have a problem with the size of their body-parts, and there's Jim Skorna, who has an acid sense of humour and makes me laugh.

 

I have to say I quite enjoy doing the Google-search for stuff about which another member has posted a question; I usually learn something new for myself. Perhaps I'm just naturally nosey. All those 'Which AI is best...' and 'How do I...' and 'Why doesn't ...' and 'What caused this...' are great ways of learning how to avoid the same problem, learning more about how FS works, hell, even learning about some previously undiscovered addon.

 

Ill-educated answers (like tweaking MAX_DEM_AREA can cure bad autogen...) irritate me much more.

 

Beyond that, I'm sure the people who give noobs a hard time for asking popular questions are the same people who express a dislike of lurking. It pleases me to see someone who will ask rather than hunt anonymously - I'd say that doing a forum search for an answer without interacting with other members is lurking, whether you're logged-in or not.

 

Personally, I'd rather see the question (or ask it) than attend a forum in which newcomers feel too oppressed to post.

 

Best regards,

Dave

Really I think FS and Avsim especially has one of the nicest communities that I've seen so far, just look at pretty much any mainstream gaming "community" to find way more rudeness. 

 

 

That is certainly true, but we also aren't playing a "game" based on Red Bull and Cheetos-fueled violence, so I would expect as much. Most of us, really it us quite the majority, get along just fine. 

 

IMHO it's on the rest of us to take a little more responsibility for setting the tone here, in part by no longer tolerating the sort of behavior this thread has highlighted. Use your reporting tools and stop looking away when you see this sort of thing in progress.

 

It's been my experience that these types, the ones that are actually quite proud of themselves for how "direct" they are, usually just have never had anything worth losing, or done anything worth noting, and aren't really aware or concerned with the real-world consequences of their behavior. Often, it simply youth and/or worldly inexperience, but sometimes, it really is just a person that has nothing else to offer, and no real potential for change.

 

I reported someone just yesterday that Dave (Q_Flyer) was having a similar discussion with. I will continue to do so in the future.

 

I could use some help.

I think there is an issue with expectations. Newbies post what they think is reasonable content (mostly questions) , and also, subject-matter-experts expect reasonable postings. But the huge gap  in level of knowledge and experience makes one side's expectations much different than the other. And that occurs because the hobby is broad, complex, evolving, and to a degree competitive for some folks. This requires continuously enforcing the communication of  the rules of the forum, intervention with coaching  by the moderators, and meaningful actions, such as rewarding and communicating he good behavior and punishing the bad one. But this is nothing new, and not always practical to implement.

Perhaps a practical approach would be to consider implementing a "transition" zone for the initial posts (from the newbies?) where the content would first be reviewed by a moderator plus all those who chose to have access to that zone; then, at one point, the threads would be promoted to the "knowledge zone" and become visible to all users. Or maybe AVSIM could enable some functionality for users to opt not to see comments originated by newbies, or similar.

I think there is an issue with expectations. Newbies post what they think is reasonable content (mostly questions) , and also, subject-matter-experts expect reasonable postings. 

 

I agree with most of what you've said, but in the quoted portion...well, while expectations may indeed be an issue, one of the two positions you mention is completely unrealistic in it's expectations for the other.

 

"Newbies" posting "newbish" content is entirely reasonable, expected, and will never change.

 

No. Really.

 

NEVER.

 

So in light of that fact, we can either tell those that can't seem to deal with it to hit the road, or we can just put up with the abusive behavior and have an unpleasant and unwelcoming venue in which to gather; basically the opposite of what AVSIM has represented since it began, bearing in mind, it doesn't take many loud-mouths to set the tone if the rest of us are silent.

 

I think I'm ok with a few member's expectations having a forceful adjustment. 

 

EDIT: Just to drive home the point, that I don't believe this is a site-wide issue that we're discussing here; this really is the case of just a few bad apples. I personally don't see a need for drastic changes in moderation and/or posting format, just a little less tolerance for bad behavior among the rest of us.

Hmmm...

 

I've been participating in internet discussion groups going way back to the early days of usenet, when it was mostly a small handful of tech businesses and university departments, and I've gotta say - while not perfect (what is?), I find this one of the most genial discussion groups around.

 

That doesn't mean I have a problem with the thread topic, as it's always appropriate to remind folks to keep a level head and don't be "that guy" (and don't kid yourself - almost all of us with more than a handful of postings have crossed the line and been "that guy" at least once or twice even if we didn't start out intending to be).  But I strongly reject the notion that somehow "simmers" are worse than most other groups.  Sorry, but given some of the venom and almost complete lack of tolerance I've observed in discussion groups ranging from gaming sites, to tech sites, to motorcycling sites to, well, just about any and everything (not even considering obvious flashpoints like political and current events stuff)...  That shoe just doesn't fit. 

 

Remember - we've all got different styles, and one man's "bull" may well be another's most valued and trusted source.  Just sayin' - tolerance is a two way street.

 

Scott

I do want to clarify something: I wasn't saying that only the flight simmers are "forum bulls". I have played videogames for quite some time and have visited various gaming forums, so I can assure you all that we are far from the worst. My point was that since we're such a tight-knit group of people who like a rather advanced subject, that we shouldn't have the "videogame forum mentality", so to speak, considering what we do is more of a hobby than actual gaming.

 

As for improving the overall "warmth" of the forums, I don't think over-moderation is the answer. Do I think moderators should be less lenient on forum bulls? Absolutely. At the same time, however, we walk a fine line between being free to talk and becoming a police state, as is the case with all forums. Instead of a complete overhaul of how we operate, I suggest we try to move the balance towards the center. Sometimes a guitar needs to be tuned, but completely replacing it isn't always needed.

 

I think this responsibility falls on all of us to keep our forums "warm". If you see something that you think is over top, mention that someone is being impolite. We do this occasionally, but there's always room for improvement.