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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Aggressive Forum Users?
Slashdot reader dryriver writes:
I've noticed a disturbing trend while trying to resolve a rather tricky tech issue by asking questions on a number of internet forums. The number of people who don't help at all with problems but rather butt into threads with unhelpful comments like "Why would you want to do that in the first place?" or "why don't you look at X poorly written documentation page " was staggering. One forum user with 1,500+ posts even posted "you are such a n00b if you can't figure this out" in my question thread, even though my tech question wasn't one that is obvious or easy to resolve...
I seem to remember a time when people helped each other far more readily on the internet. Now there seems to be a new breed of forum user who a) hangs out at a forum socially all day b) does not bother to help at all and c) gets a kick out of telling you things like "what a stupid question" or "nobody will help you with that here" or similar... Where have the good old days gone when people much more readily gave other people step-by-step tips, tricks, instructions and advice?
The original submission claims the ratio of unhelpful comments to helpful ones was 5 to 1. Has anyone else experienced this? And if so, what's the best response? Leave your best answers in the comments. How do you deal with aggressive forum users?
I seem to remember a time when people helped each other far more readily on the internet. Now there seems to be a new breed of forum user who a) hangs out at a forum socially all day b) does not bother to help at all and c) gets a kick out of telling you things like "what a stupid question" or "nobody will help you with that here" or similar... Where have the good old days gone when people much more readily gave other people step-by-step tips, tricks, instructions and advice?
The original submission claims the ratio of unhelpful comments to helpful ones was 5 to 1. Has anyone else experienced this? And if so, what's the best response? Leave your best answers in the comments. How do you deal with aggressive forum users?
You're asking HERE?
Nothing requires you to do anything about them; just treat them as meaningless noise, and act the same as you would have acted if their unhelpful post did not exist.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Seems like a good ratio.
You ignore the unhelpful comments. I mean, they aren't really hurting you, are they? All you really need is the one answer that solves your problem.
U mean stackoverflow?
Next question.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I have to wonder whether asking this on /. counts as a sort of metatroll ...
Aberrations have appeared in my destiny prognostication engine!
1. Use a forum's ignore feature
2. Grow a thicker skin when someone says a mean thing online.
Then they think they are changing the world and you and your users get to move on.
Piss off you fucking cunts!!!!
Very well then, good day, sir.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Remain calm and collected, use yer skillz to trace their accounts and reveal their identities, then go to their moms' houses, DRAG THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS OUT OF THEIR BASEMENTS AND BASH THOSE LOSERZ IN THEIR BITCH ASS FACES!!!!
We all should have seen this coming, with silly questions like this being posted on slashdot. Slow nerd news day, I guess.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Humanity rarely seems uglier then when seen through the lens of Internet comments. Yes, it's very sad. That said, this post asks "what to do". And there's really nothing one can do in that narrow context. Raise your kids well. Set a good example. But is there a particular way to respond to unhelpful Internet comments that will magically make them go away? I don't think so...
Honestly, if there's a stack exchange site (for instance, stackoverflow.com for programming questions) for it, I ask there - the Q&A focused design is far from perfect, but the 'attitude' answers don't last long, and are removed pretty quickly.
It's got other problems of course, but for this particular problem, the Stack Exchange model works pretty well at keeping the stupid and useless answers to a lower level than other sites.
Beyond that, you've got to search out communities that aren't full of jerks and a-holes. Sadly, there's at least one in every crowd, but some communities are better at ejecting bad actors than others.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Non-answers are the worst!
I at least try to offer something else as an alternative in a polite manner, after I try to answer the actual question (or state that I don't actually have an answer, but the alternative might hopefully provide something useful).
AC comments get piped to
You're asking HERE?
I'll second that.
It might be because nice people tend to lose patience and go away, so that the forums have nothing but griefers left.
Lots of forums are completely toxic in this regard, and Slashdot has fallen prey to this as well. Post a non-insulting position about something that doesn't jibe with the group-think and you'll get nothing but insults. No thought put into it, almost a boiler-plate "you're really stupid" or "you're a racist".
Try to contribute to Slashdot by submitting articles, and the toxic users will mod them as spam and get your account locked.
They seem to think that any tactic in support of their end goals is OK, and they don't see the value of well-formed alternate opinions, and reasoned discourse. All they see is that opposition seems to be less over time.
They view it as "winning" when reasonable people lose patience with the griefers and leave.
What's left is the toxic residue.
I blame the perl community. If you asked a question in the perl news groups, instead of a short answer you'd get paragraphs explaining how much of an idiot you are for not knowing the answer or not knowing which document (out of tens of thousands) had the answer to your question.
-- Will program for bandwidth
It's been like that since the Internet went mainstream in the 1990's, and even when the Internet was opened up to Universities before going mainstream. The overall proportion of useless forum idiots has probably stayed relatively constant for the last 20+ years (and probably even before Web forums overtook Usenet).
The problem probably seems worse now because the Internet population is much larger than it was back then, making the absolute numbers larger; but the ratio of idiots to the entire population is probably in the same ballpark as back then.
The answer has always been the same: you must ignore them, and don't feed the trolls. At least on Usenet, we had the twit filter that would allow us to list the people we wanted to automatically ignore.
That would make such an amazingly original movie plot.
Just avoid the python groups, and you'll avoid the spots where most of these sorts of people hang out.
In a more serious vein, I haven't seen this happening excessively. I've spent a good deal of time on a large number of forums and irc channels, and by and large, this doesn't seem to be happening frequently in the way you describe. I'm not saying that you haven't experienced this, it's just that in the last 20 years, there haven't been a lot of know-nothing folks just spamming "you suck noob" to any given question.
I can guess why; in any technical discussion it quickly becomes apparent who does and does not know what they're talking about. In fact, many quickly devolve into a special-case-knowledge comparison contest. The unhelpful person is ignored or derided by the masses as a whole. They quickly leave. That's why they're just not around.
That being said, what I have seen is people asking other people to do their work for them, including but not limited to: easily googleable questions, questions specified explicitly by documentation, questions that require more information to answer than is given, questions that could easily be answered by trying it out in a test, and so on. 95% of the time, these folks are inexperienced in technical forums as a whole, and don't understand that they're being lazy and trying to shift work they could easily do onto others because of it.
This is irritating, especially in channels of 300+ people with new folks jumping in and asking a single question and popping out, never to contribute, once every 2-3 minutes. Especially when many of them appear to be homework.
The best option for these folks is to ask them to read http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/... , especially the whole of http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/... , before asking another question.
Some forums are completely toxic. Fuck reddit.....
On the other hand, read the stickies, use the search, and for fucks sake, RTFM before you ask for help.
You are either
1.) On the wrong forum.
2.) posting off topic.
3.) not trying hard enough to "self help"
4.) Ignoring the 'READ THIS FIRST" thread.
5.) Fucking retarded.
Sometimes, the problem is you. Tough love. Not trying to be an asshole, but ther sheer number of people who can't seem to follow simple directions is staggering.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Yes, either you will have to moderate, or get the readers to moderate for you, like on slashdot or stackoverflow.
Welcome to the Eternal September...
As far back as the early 2000's or late 90's, I remember running into this same attitude all the time in the IRC channels for Linux.
They used to be one of the best places to get assistance, but also the best place to get verbal abuse from half the users in the channel in the process.
So yeah .... sure is irritating, but nothing new by a long shot.
People are dicks. More at 11.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
April 1st...
It's *always* been that way. Always. Some places are probably worse than others which might have to do with what you're asking and where...
The problem with forums these days is they're full of repeat questions and answers. People that have been around for a while get annoyed, just search for your question in Google and you get hundreds of the same answers over a variety of forums. This clogs any search function including Google with pages of duplicate information while the real gems or more deep information such as why an issue appears gets buried while answers get briefer and more shallow every time someone asks the question.
If you don't want this sort of stuff on your forums, close/delete the topics where it is clear people haven't bothered researching the problem. These days it seems people claiming to be IT professionals are just posting to forums to get a quick answer and have others do their jobs, those morons should not even be employed in the field.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You could give warnings and bans for use of offensive and vulgar language (e.g., "stupid," "fucking," "republicans"), but that would risk infringing on non-offensive or vulgar use of the words. Although personally, I can't think of a time I had to use the word "stupid" to explain how to write code. Negative nancies have no place in any form of industry, including software development forums.
I would see if there was another forum that was better. If the users in a forum are too elitist and unfriendly to newbies then there are probably other people who also view the forum in the same way, who have left to form (or liven up) another forum.
I am active on several forums where yes, such users as you describe do exist, but there are also almost always friendly users who see it as their task to help newbies out. You could perhaps wait a little while for that person or people to post.
That said, on many forums that are related to a hobby, you are expected to do your research before posting. Some have Wikis or other informative posts with info on how to do certain things.
Too many times I see newbies create a new thread the first thing they do, in which they ask for someone to do all the work for him - and that never flies.
Instead, show that you do have some knowledge and that you are looking for a missing piece in a puzzle, people's opinions and advice.
Your post should also be simple to read, specific and to the point. People should ideally find out already from the subject headline what you are trying to find out. A thread with the subject "Somebody please HELP ME" and a post that is one long run-in sentence does not work. (I see those threads all the time, unfortunately)
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Isn't that the whole purpose of metamoderation as found in Slashcode? Discourse seems to have something similar.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
There is a plugin for some forum software that allows you to cause them all sorts of hell.
Sometimes it will error out, other times it will work, it gives the illusion your site is having lots of problems and depending on how you set it, drive them mad. Most will simply tire of it, especially if you ramp it up slowly. Some will figure out something is fishy though, at which point you have to do something more, but it sure is fun watching them squirm. I reserved this only for those who are there to causing trouble but are very aware of the thin line they walk and make sure to just stay on safe side of it, but only just.
Another option is a rep system.
While it can be abused, it is quite effective against most trolls. Unfortunately some decide that is fine too and work to get a low reputation, competition at it's finest. You need to set the ban level at a pretty easy level to cross to avoid this.
Bottom line, don't let them live on your boards, no matter how much their friends complain, or how much they contribute.
A buddy of mine and I were considering writing a script that would search Google for forum posts that had the first reply being "Just Google it", and reply with a "FUCK OFF" type message.
I'm sure you've all seen that though. You search Google for an issue you have, see a forum topic that perfect describes the issue, and literally only 1 reply, telling you to Google it.
This is why I love sites like StackOverflow or GitHub. That type of anti-community behavior is highly looked down upon on those sites. Is the qustion a dupe? COOL! Just fucking link to the initial question then! Can it be found on Google? Sweet, then fucking link to the results!
If I want to rise to it, I may respond in kind - dependant on the netiquette of the site I'm on, stickies in the forum, if I'm a regular, my mood, if I'm bored and fancy some lulz, or any other number of complex reasons. There's no "single" good reason to respond. It depends on a complex matrix of factors.
Alternatively, if I can't be assed to respond, I'll ignore the comment and move on with my day.
I've noticed as well the number of posts from those whose prose makes me reach for the Nomex undies, not just in technical areas. The urge to respond either with salient points or in kind is one that should be resisted. It doesn't help you, and only lets those posting them "count coup" on you and encourages them.
For some, the keyboard interface to a computer is all the excuse they need to set aside any form of self regulation, empathy, or modicum of civilized behavior. They are indeed damaged human beings, with no real hope of achieving adult maturity, be they ever so aged.
In short, the only thing you can do that is 100 percent effective is to simply ignore them when necessary, respond to them never, and use their self destructive example as a lesson in how not to operate yourself.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
One forum I have helped moderate had a number of moderator tools:
1) You could edit any post. Often some flamebait line comes as a single line at the end of an otherwise reasonable post. You can just edit out the flame and send them a message explaining that they should be more respectful of other forum members.
2) You could delete a message. Some messages were just pure troll or flame, again you can just delete them and explain to them why it was removed. Then they can argue with privately instead of in the forum where it annoys everyone.
3) Temp ban. We also had the option to ban a user for a few days. That was great because someone who just was really hot and kept posting sometimes would be perfectly fine with a few days to cool off. Lots of people know when they are unreasonable and are fine after some correction, then they are productive forum members.
4) Remove. Sometimes people are just so grating, that really there is no option for the well-being of others other than to remove them. Sure they can register under other usernames and come back, but often these people have such distinctive writing styles that a moderator can recognize them right away and just ban new users with a similar stye or message.
In general I would say, as a moderator you should give more leeway to people who have been on a forum for a while, but brook no nonsense with new members or repeat violators. Moderation is inherently a grey area anyway, so every action is a judgement call... it's best if you can have a few moderators so they can discuss options amongst them and come to a reasonable solution.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The main reason I think StackOverflow doesn't have similar issues, is there really is not discussion - there is a question, and a variety of answers. Both of those are very large.
Then there can be discussion, but it's all in small text below, and after a few messages is hidden under an expand link. So noise from arguments there affects things very little compared to people voting on the solutions they found worked teh best... and since those up votes usually came from people trying something and found that it worked, they are mostly accurate (after some time the highest ones may be wrong, but then you just go to the next one...).
The other thing I think they got right is all of the most active contributors can edit things heavily. They can fix wrong answers (or questions), they can edit out spurious noise in an answer. It's a scalable way to keep questions and answers meaningful and concise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
History is revisionist by definition...
In spite of the horribly rude tone, there's a hint of truth to that. A big reason why people get snarky is because so many people don't even bother to try to figure things out before they ask for help. A sizable percentage of people seem to be completely helpless when anything goes wrong. They don't know how to do a Google search, they don't know how to read for comprehension, and they don't know how to figure out what things to look for when skimming/searching documentation for solutions to their problems. This lack of critical thinking skills is quite alarming.
As a result, even those of us who still try to help tend to point people to the right piece of documentation first, waiting to re-explain things until after they come back and say that they still don't understand something. And after a few rounds, even I have to say, "Read the doc and figure it out." After all, my job is not to write your code for you. I'll try to help, and I'll try to steer you in the right direction, but there are limits.
Cynically, I place the blame for these problems squarely at the feet of Apple for trying to dumb down programming, technical documentation, computer use, etc. to the point where people don't have to think to code, rather than saying, "You must be this tall to ride the ride." The result is a bunch of people who don't bother to think and who expect others to do the thinking for them. They've bred a whole class of "duh-velopers" who literally can't do much more than piece together code snippets and tweak them slightly. Heaven help them if a snippet contains something like "insert your customization here", because they go slack-jawed. And this results in everybody who actually understands what's going on having to waste a lot of time explaining things that should have been obvious.
IMO, you can't fix one problem without fixing both. People are jerks because the newbies have driven all the nice people away by incessantly asking questions whose answers should be obvious to anybody who actually read and comprehended the docs, and most of the people who didn't comprehend the docs are still not going to understand it no matter how many times you explain it. Fix the clueless question problem, and people who are able to actually figure out what they're doing will stick around and will continue to be helpful. Short of that, nothing will help in the long run.
To some degree, that is probably best solved by reputation-bssed segregation. Anybody should be able to answer any questions, but until you get rep, your questions should be initially seen only by other newbies (and if no newbie can answer them, they would then bubble up to folks with more rep). Rep should be awarded for asking good questions or giving good answers. Clueless people who are incapable of asking good questions and giving good answers should thus remain stuck in the newbie question cesspool while the adults discuss real issues.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This happens on every forum. Something like this...
Me: Hi, my game crashes with error code 0xF00.
Mr Stickler: We need a full dxdiag report or we can't help. Read the rules.
Me: Here you go. (posts 5 pages of garbage)
Mr OneUp: I see you are running a R2999 graphics, you should buy a GT5000 like me.
Me: Card is fine. Next?
Mr Doofus: You need to reinstall windows. I do it every night.
Me: Not gonna happen.
And then the thread dies.
Clickety Click
"Why would you want to do that in the first place?"
I find a number of people can't think "outside of the box". They have their preconceived notions of how things work, and things cannot evolve within their realm of observation. Advancements can only be made by people they don't interact with. Advancements that defy this rule are flukes.
For them, the question is not, "Where can I be?", but "How can I stay where I am?"
For this person, the natural response to the question "How can I do X?" is not one of science, of exploration, of expanding knowledge and understanding.
It's "Why would you want to do X in the first place?"
Nevermind that the tool you create today may have a greater use tomorrow. If this person had their way, we'd still be wiping our asses with our bare hands.
Indeed. I have had to give people a price-quote on a FOSS support mailing list several times so far to make it clear to them that I would not be doing their job for them for free. Some people do not grasp that there is free help and then there is actual work. Of course, many of the trolls are too stupid or too bad human beings to care to find out whether somebody is lazy or actually has a real problem. These you can only ignore, they will never bring positive contributions to the table.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Rule #1: You cannot win.
Rule #2: The only way to not lose is to not play.
Rule #3: There is no Rule #3.
Ignore them. Any other action is encouraging them.
Aggressive forum users are a sign of the failure of the moderators. You'll see that on commenting systems where there is peer moderation (like on slashdot) or very relaxed, almost non existent moderation such as youtube aggressive forum users are never really a problem. On youtube where moderation is non existent, users know not to make aggressive, provoking posts because they know that the reply they get back will be 2x as aggressive and nothing will be held back, plus the aggressive forum will be rediculed by the rest of the forum commenters discouraging them from a repeat offence.
On a forum where there is active moderation but the moderator takes a favorable/ignorant stance on aggressive users, this leads to a really bad culture on the board because nothing is really done about the said aggressive forum user and it just kills serious threads and drives legitimate commenters off. Once the aggressive user knows he can get away with belittling and being rude to others he continues it in other threads because he knows the moderators will do little if anything about it.
Unfortunately there is nothing you can really do about aggressive users like that because it is moderators failing to do their job/doing a half assed effort at it and if you complain they will take action on you instead of on the perpetrator. In some ways I think some moderators even LIKE having aggressive users around because they lighten the load on the moderators by killing off discussions and driving off people so there is less for them to moderate/reply to in threads.
Examples of failing forums:
IMDB forums. I am not surprised the IMDB forums are shutting down. IMDB is owned by Amazon and their forums are a disgrace, filled with trolls and the moderators do a extremely poor job about it.
The Steam "Help and Tips", and "Suggestion/Ideas" forums. Just like the OP describes, when people ask for genuine help they get shitposts. When they make a suggestion they get replies to the line of "Why would you want to do that in the first place" or the vanilla response that the suggested idea will only help griefers/phishers/spammers, ignoringthe fact that they are acting like griefers themselves with their responses. It's like the MPAA trying to curb copyright infringement by using the keywords like "funding terrorism". They can't just reply to someone civily, they have to be insultive and negative to the person they are replying to. It is this sort of negativity that ruins discussions by serial discussion killers such as Start_running http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198043285599, Satoru http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970218004 and Zetikla http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198001062896
In the Doom board someone asked for a Linux port and the windows trolls swooped in:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/379720/discussions/0/357286119106149442/ . The moderators did nothing about it.
I know that this post now is going to attract all sorts of trolls but the posts I'm talking about people write genuine lengthy on topic posts that have nothing to do with other users and they get attacked/griefed for it. That is what I am talking about that drives forum contributers off and stonewalls discussions.It is a big problem on discussion boards where the moderators are poor at doing their job. If they can;t moderate then they should let the users as a whole do it for them like on slashdot.
We definitely need more fiber around here. I guess thank you.
What is this crap anyway?
Here's what I think happens:
I user starts using project X, and seeks help. They see a deficiency in support, so start helping people on the project X forum/IRC/mailing list. This user spends all kinds of time, researching answers, analyzing XYZ "how to article" the other users claimed to follow.
The user seeking help says, "well, I followed XYZ how-to to the letter, it's obviously something wrong with project X"
Helpful user points out the man page indicates different from what the how-to claims.
The user refuses to read the man page, just wants Helpful to tell them what to do.
Rinse. Repeat.
--
The problem is two-fold: there are lazy users, and burned out helpful folks. The latter gets jagged, but the new users stay lazy, because they're always new. Once they move beyond new, they fit the middle ground.
Unfortunately, I don't know of a solution other than paid support. These guys get paid to stay nice, but the users stay lazy.
Slashdot has declined in this regard since I joined a decade or so ago. Maybe because most people here were here for the discussions and not...well...whatever the first half of the posts above are here for.
But I'll tell you that aggressive people on the internet isn't a new fad. Gaming forums from the 90s had it too. My guess:
1) without a way to call someone out, people will say anything. Anonymous cowards -- you can't point to an old post and say they've done a turnabout, etc.
2) more people, more anonymous people and the culture has changed. Politeness is rare on forums that everyday people inhabit -- and now there are a lot more people on the internet and they've grown up in a culture of saying whatever you want on the internet.
All I can say is good luck and ignore most things.
Let's just skip the inevitable bullshit and cut right to the chase here. There are a lot of people with mental health issues. Inherently, some of these have a lot of internal aggression from unresolved issues and they will take it out whenever and on whomever they can.
Let's also be realistic, there are a bunch of these people here at /. and we have had a surge of anonymous jerks flood in here to troll because they can, it's what they do. They do so because they are too cowardly to face their own issues and resolve them. Consequently they are so full of bile and vehemence that it overflows from them.
Asking for help is seen by these "people" as a sign of weakness, as opposed to the humility of learning that it is. You have to make yourself vulnerable to ask a question and that is what these pathetic trolls do.
You can do something about it by dealing with your own issues so that you are mentally stable enough to endure the trolls, then turn it around on them so that they never bother you again. You must confront bullies otherwise they will keep bothering you. Even though you are making yourself vulnerable to appeal for help you must be armed with the knowledge that these people will attack you if they see what they perceive as weakness and be ready to answer, in kind, if necessary.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Aggressive forum users are a sign of the failure of the moderators.
The specific behaviour the OP describes is more a sign of the type of forum they're participating in, it's, unfortunately, fairly common behaviour among geek/techie personalities. Go to a forum dealing with, say, gardening or pets or childcare and you'll very rarely see this sort of thing, the standard response there is sympathy and advice. So the best advice perhaps is to hold your nose and ignore the crap, or try posting to several different technical forums in the hope that you'll get good advice from at least one of them.
Moderation, I agree, is one way of dealing with this, e.g. Stackexchange does a pretty good job of keeping things on-topic, but sometimes you just have to mentally lint-filter the crap in the hope of finding the nuggets of good advice.
A: Elect them president.
Table-ized A.I.
Forums are crap for questions(*). Even if you do get an answer, it'll be buried somewhere in the 70+ pages of morons waffling on with worthless and irrelevant crap...with each post having an irritating animated avatar that was tiresome at best the first time you saw it, rage-inducing the 10,000th time.
Specific questions are best asked on Q&A sites (like Stack Exchange, or one of the many clones).
Good answers get upvoted, bad answers get downvoted, abusive ones get deleted. And there's a good chance that your question, or something very similar, has already been asked and answered before.
(*) They mostly suck for discussions too. Mailing lists work better, especially if subscribers understand that top-posting is a crime against humanity.
Help me Anonymous Coward, you're my only hope!
So you're like self-identifying as a ______ (hint: millennial).
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You're correct in mentioning the conversation being had is useful in its own right. For example, normally pointing out that presenting a sentiment of 'what you said didn't help as much as I think it should have', which doesn't really say anything constructive in terms of how the OP may have been more helpful, isn't normally the type of comment that'd be very welcome. However, since the topic is people being helpful in forums, may have asking the OP or the public at large for elaboration on what they meant been a better use of this forums time, for example? And if you were to have instead asked such a question, is there some way you could add something that would help fill the gap you see? Also, I'm don't necessarily believe you meant it that way but I'll say what you stated seems to read as simply cynical to me. My apologies if I'm interpreting what you were attempting to get at incorrectly.
They have low self esteem and are most likely losers in real life outside their keyboard
I dub thee (Score:+1, Insightful)
Internet trolls and video game griefers are just as broken in real life as you've always suspected, according to a new psychology paper by Canadian researchers. It turns out that the same folks who love to disrupt online conversations for the"lulz" are likely to also exhibit some pretty nasty personality traits in general.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I moderate an SE forum. There are major issues with n00bs. The user base could easily be divided into two groups, the users that want to stick around and build the community and those that do not. The users that don't want to build the community get on and do one or more of these things.
1) Expect an answer to their question, even an instant answer, and don't want to do any work or research. A lot of new user questions could be answered by google, but people wont take the time to learn how to use it.
2) Don't read any of the guidelines\rules
3) Fail to communicate
4) Get offended when people ask them for clarification
On this forum some of the new users are chased away, I don't have a problem with that. If somebody is going to contribute, they will get answers to their questions and they will take the time and present their questions in clear way.
If your new user to a forum, your a sycophant. Its your job to make sure you have a good experience, get to work.
Most forums have moderators, most forums have rules against aggressive behavior, but your to lazy to figure out how the rules work or how to get help if someone breaks them.
People are taking their valuable time to help you, respect that, when you do you'll get some respect.
Anyone remember the Smoothwall mailing list circa year 2000? Now THAT was trolling. Anything since is just lightweight.
I had a similar experience with the Avast formus. Tried to get a question asked and saw the same person berating others on use the search function the answer is there. I tried using the function to no avail as im sure these people did as well. Tried calling him out on him not being helpful at all and got forum banned.
What they are trying to do is "red pill the normies"? My question, is - is there any hope to blue pill the groupies? People come in genuinely distressed and the question is weather they will ever be willing to listen to reason rather than making idiots of themselves and alienating anyone willing to help them?
Employed developers make happy developers... and ones with far less time on their hands. Thus they dont spend their time on forums all day. Improve the highly exploited H1B program, make laws that protect employees for unlawful firing practices, etc etc. BUT... since this will NEVER happen, expect those comments to continue. Sorry.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Some people ask intrinsically annoying questions.
Case 1: The case of the missing context
1. They have a problem they want to solve
2. They arrive at a solution they want to implement
3. They fail at the implementation -- perhaps because it's an inappropriate one for the original problem
4. They go on a forum
5. They request help on how to implement their solution, giving no context, and leaving the original problem out entirely
This. Is. Major. F'ing. Annoying.
If they simply told us what problem they were trying to solve, rather than asking how to implement their particularly bad approach to solving the problem, they'd likely get a large number of helpful answers.
Case 2: The mysterious homework I don't want to do myself
1. They get a homework assignment
2. They have some constraints
3. They arrive at a particularly bad implementation based on those constraints
4. They fail at the implementation
5. They go on a forum
6. They actually communicate the problem they are trying to solve (miracle of miracles!), but they won't talk about other solutions to the problem, because other solutions won't fit the artificial constraints placed on the problem as part of it being a homework assignment
This. Is. Major. F'ing. Annoying.
We suspect it's a homework problem; the professor at IIT gives the same problem to their class each year, and it's that time of year again. They won't confirm this, because we know they are supposed to do their own F'ing homework, and won't help them cheat, if we know for sure they are asking a homework question.
Case 3: The googles, they do nothingk!
1. The solution is well known
2. You are too lazy to look it up using google
3. Instead you go on a forum and ask the question
4. Even though if you asked google the same question, the first hit you'd get is something from two years ago, in that very forum
5. Anyone who was around two years ago realizes you are using the forum as your own personal search engine
6. They give you shit for it -- shit you actually deserve, for being a lazy ass
---
Look:
* Do a little research before you ask; someone else has probably had the same problem before, and the answer is already out there
* If not, communicate the problem you are trying to solve
* Your solution is obviously not working, or you wouldn't be asking: it's not interesting, because it doesn't work: don't ask us to fix it
* Don't be so married to your solution that you are unwilling to communicate the problem, and consider alternate solutions
If it's homework:
* Some people (10%) will actually help you with these -- they are being assholes by robbing you of a learning opportunity
* They figure it's a win-win
* You get the homework solution so you get a passing grade
* You don't actually learn anything in the process
* You are not competition for jobs which would require an actual ability to solve this kind of problem
* Most people (90%), will give you shit for being a lazy ass and not doing your own homework
---
The negative reactions you are getting: maybe it's not them; maybe it's you.
Watch the scene with Charlie Sheen giving advice to Jennifer Grey in the police station in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" again. Seriously: it's probably you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
My favorite response is to tell them, "[This software or device] is so stupid and useless, it can't even do [problem you're trying to solve]!" Whereby those same trolls will fall over themselves trying to win you back. Problem solved!
At least for the questions "Why would you want to do that in the first place?" and "why don't you look at X poorly written documentation page" I agree. Often users have problems that they are trying to solve in a bad way, or it's difficult to know what they don't understand about the documentation. Adding some more context will frequently get you an answer. Calling those who bother to read your question and write an answer unhelpful or worse will not.
And obviously keep the name under control, instead of letting people use it for anything they dislike.
That should be enough to discourage em from posting or easy classifying users by those that will self describe with it.
Go to a forum dealing with, say, gardening or pets or childcare and you'll very rarely see this sort of thing, the standard response there is sympathy and advice.
I disagree.
I frequent a large parenting forum.
The bitterness and disdain for others I see there is unseen in the "techie" world. Newbie questions get not only mocked, but attacked on personal level and with psychological finesse that only comes with practice. The responders know that new parents are uncertain in their parenting skills and they attack this condition with precision. "What kind of parent could ask a question like this?" "MY child does ALWAYS obey the rules we have set. What mistakes must you have done for your kids to not obey yours?" etc etc.
The people on the parenting forum seem like Putin's trolls in training for me. They practice psychological forum-warfare, trying to identify the weak spots in other participants. People who come for advice in parenting MUST have the weak spots (otherwise they would not seek help in the first place) and thus provide a good training ground.
Thus this behaviour is universal to the 'net, not limited to "techie forums".
Aggressive forum users are a sign of the failure of the moderators...(..., ..., ...)
It's is absolute rubbish. That's like saying that criminality is a failure of the police.
Offending is often a result of lack of education, domestically or at school. It is also largely the result of the individual in question failing to apply him or herself in a constructive manner.
Yes, some forums are not moderator well, some not at all but the community is JUST AS RESPONSIBLE. There are simply not enough moderators, (or cops for that matters) to enforce everyone obeys the rules all the time. This is why there are fines and penalties to act as a detractor.
This is exactly why you have things like a neighbourhood watch in real life. That's the community getting off their ass and doing something. Slashdot has a great community system but stop expecting moderators or anyone else to sort everything out sometimes that just does not happen #becauselife
You are going to get shit posts anywhere on the internet. the frequency and derision often correlate with teenagers. Why do kids do stupid shit? because they are kids and no one is there to get them the proverbial smack upside the head.
Not everything you disagree with is trolling but if you examine your average school's classroom dynamics you will find that not much has changed in adulthood. Look, the most powerful country on Earth is now run by a bully that in his 50s still spoke like a teen in a locker room.
People into ham radio are very good in posting useless and/or nasty comments in forum discussions (examples ? Just look here to begin), so they will keep aggressive users busy with endless talks, leaving other people free to discuss what really matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Trevor Moore the ballad of Billy John.
And of course:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/co...
Greater internet ****wad theory.
-Styopa
Centralized moderation is toxic. It accomplishes nothing. Just more millennial "i need a safe space" BS.
It invites cliquishness and groupthink.
Dissent (no matter how constructive or intelligent) is squashed.
Expect to have large portions of the community leave when a moderator shows favoritism.
The specific behaviour the OP describes is more a sign of the type of forum they're participating in, it's, unfortunately, fairly common behaviour among geek/techie personalities. Go to a forum dealing with, say, gardening or pets or childcare and you'll very rarely see this sort of thing, the standard response there is sympathy and advice.
Yes and no. I have sympathy with both sides and I'm about to write an ill structured post, blathering my thoughts all over the place. With that out of the way...
Thing is, on those gardening forums, you're generally asking for free help from people who are world experts, very busy (the forum covers work too) and can command $2000 a day consulting fees. Tahe for example, Theo De Raadt. He is one hellofa smart guy and leads an absolutely world class operating system (one which incidentally seems to be plagued with freeloaders---how many megacorps rely on openssh and contribute basically nothing) on remarkably small funds. The forums/mailing lists aren't a social gathering, they're very much work, but work that happens to be visible and in theory accessible to all.
In a very real sense, butting into those forums, interrupting busy professionals doing work and asking for unpaid help when you can't be bothered to do the research is the height of rudeness. Someone telling you to "fuck off" is less rude. I have actually had the pleasure of conversing with Mr De Raadt on the mailing list. I was doing a "you probably shouldn't be doing this" kind of thing, but I probably spent 4 extra hours researching after deciding to write a post, reading the man pages, browsing the source and forum posts, to make sure I wasn't taking the piss. I actually learned a bunch more doing that and so was able to go in at a deeper level.
Theo himself weighed in on the thread after a few posts. He was polite, and helpful and it was an overall excellent experience. But I didn't ask a very busy, very overworked person to stop work and help me for free so I don't have to think myself.
On the other hand...
I don't tend to respond like that (yet?). I can command reasonable consulting fees in my area and I get massively n00bish questions from people trying to use my C++ library which makes it clear they're only passingly familiar with a C++ compiler and can't even answer basic questions like "what compiler are you using". But I'm not famous and my code isn't anything like as popular as OpenBSD, so while those are a relatively high proportion of questions, they are reasonably rare.
I am getting slightly annoyed by them though. I imagine if it was daily (or more) then my patience would have worn very thin by now.
But it goes all the way down. N00b questions on a n00b forum are fine. Actually n00b questions on any forum are fine, provided the n00b in question (and we are all n00bs) are not entitled. But after a couple of years of answering question from people who want a quick fix or their homework solved, I think people get really, really jaded and worn. At that point they tend to see bad behaviour even when there is none. For example, misunderstanding a question, then attacking based on that BECAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE ANOTHER FUCKING HOMEWORK QUESTION JUST FUCK OFF!!11!1one etc.
But they, don't want to leave the forum because there are also the good tech bits.
Oh and of course some people are simply raging assholes who believe that unpleasantness is a substitute for quality (or hides a lack of it), or just like to shit on others to make themselves feel good. The trouble is the aggressiveness from the competent, but deeply jaded people allows the assholeishness from the incompetent to flourish.
But bear in mind that it is assholey to ask a world expert for help when 10 minutes of googling would have solved the problem. Also bear in mind that we all have days where somehow we miss blindingly obvious answers.
Basically there are assholes on both sides, and there's a lot of jadedness.
I have no idea what the solution is.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
While it is a fairly common problem on tech forums, it might have something to do with the large number of people that we get to deal with who have no interest in learning, want us to solve all of their problems, and (very important) consider us to be sub-humans incapable of human interaction or emotion for the rest of their time. Technical people get to deal with lots of non-technical people who have technical problems, and who have zero appreciation for our efforts or our very existence other than as a way to solve their probems. This is definitely different from gardening or pets: the people asking questions there are already part of the community themselves, and don't look down on the people they expect to solve their problems.
There are other problems too: far too many students asking for help with homework (and always the same homework too! "Implement a linked list", how original). Too many people apparently completely unaware of how to use the search function of the forum. Too many people who just cannot bother to read. Too many people who get the help they want, but completely forget to post a "thank you" (or accept your answer, in the case of Stackoverflow).
Having said all that, yes, tech forums tend to be toxic. Entirely too many postings start or end with a sneer ("Are you a moron?", or "You must be Trump", for example). It doesn't add anything, it only increases hostility, so why add it?
As for Stackoverflow(/Stackexchange), it's no exception, really. I tried to help people in the C++ forum for a while - until I had a few of my answers modded to -5 (really bad) and then saw the same answer posted verbatim by another poster with a score a hundred times mine, who promptly received +30 or more for it. Suffice it to say, I stopped posting there.
If anyone says something or behaves in a manner not to your liking it is your DUTY to "shut them down" and "call them out". You must protest until they stop doing what upsets/triggers you. If you fail at this you will never have good luck ...ever.. and your SJW membership will be permanently revoked no matter how much of a raving loon you continue 2B.
I see very regular post hijacking from noobs - like asking people to debug code that isn't even relevant to the discussion, just because the forum members are talking about the language or application. That is annoying but they usually get ignored.
The same thing we did on CompuServe, Prodigy, Bulletin Boards before the web was invented, throw the idiots out.
You can't discuss with morons.
2. You are too lazy to look it up using google
It's actually quite incredible that about 70% of my admittedly crap coding problems are answered by Google pointing to a forum where someone asked a similar question and someone else was helpful.
If you answer even idiots politely and properly you increase the signal to noise on the internet. If the answer is simply "Go f'n google it" then the next person Googling it may just end up with your unhelpful response, get frustrated, and go find an internet forum.
By all means tell them that Google has a wealth of information but answer the problem too.
Tech forums also tend to draw people in who don't even bother reading the question in it's entirety before cutting and pasting an answer. A good example of that was the other day when I found a post asking how to set up shared storage an Oracle RAC cluster on XEN only to be told it's not possible (it is, I've done it) It would lead to disk corruption even if it was possible (Oracle RAC would keep that from happening) and he should use a network share instead if he wants to share files amount multiple users. Thing is this user has been posting the same useless response to any question involving shared virtual disks for the past 5 years.
And that brings up the next problem: If you sound sure of yourself, people assume you know what you are talking about and mod the post up even if it's completely wrong
I agree with the majority of your post. I do find the amount of moderation on Stack Exchange to be excessive. A post that is just a little off topic gets "this is off topic" and the poster is shut down
When someone asks a hopelessly naive question in a pubic forum, the easiest thing for everyone is to ignore. The second easiest is to point to a FAQ. In a community of reasonable people, you'd kind of expect that the real experts learn to recognize real problems - like Theo de Raadt not bothering to chime in to your problem until it grew into a conversation - and that less expert people get to feel good answering relatively simple problems. One imagine that they get tired of answering the same questions and mature into the "more expert" tier, but get replaced by new people.
The question is, if someone doesn't have anything useful to contribute, why should they take valuable time out of their day to post an abusive, insulting response? There's no rule that you have to reply to every post.
Yeah, true. You do lose some potentially valuable input from people when you moderate strictly, but then it does keep a lot of the dross out, it's a tradeoff. My pet peeve with StackExchange is the "due to low-quality answers, you can't post here because you don't have any pixie points". It's a discussion on the history of Ethiopian pottery in 4000BC, how many pixie points do you expect me to have collected so far on this topic?
Actually my pet peeve is how they absolutely refuse to allow private messaging, despite endless requests going back years for it. Everything else pales into insignificance compared to that global-scale piece of braindamage.
[...] it's, unfortunately, fairly common behaviour among geek/techie personalities. Go to a forum dealing with, say, gardening or pets or childcare and you'll very rarely see this sort of thing, the standard response there is sympathy and advice. [...]
From experience I have to disagree. I have seen different communities focusing on the same issue behave radically different. And frankly, for the most part I found geeks to be quite productive. The tone may not be the most empathetic, but geeks seem more open to solving a puzzle even if they do not see a useful application in it themselves. They are more open to telling you in your face if an idea actually is stupid, but for me that also is a valid and often helpful reply. YMMV, of course.
And I have seen highly toxic communities around non-tech issues like cooking, parenting (Oh boy, hell hath no fury like a parent criticised.), emergency medicine, Lego, cosplay, whiskey...
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I don't see this "trend". You find such instances, but it's definitely no trend.
Where you find them, you often habe projects, which annoyed a lot of users first. There is a more aggressive mood, when users got no help and got their issues closed with "30 days no activity", because the devs didn't do anything about the well described issue, which is still in the product.
This should of course NOT cause aggressive non-constructive behaviour, but humans are humans and sometimes this happens. If you want a nice productive community, you need to build a nice community. YOU are part of the community and in some kind of (soft) leader role. If you form the community, you get the community you want. If you just wait for an angry mob to form in your issues, you actually don't have a community, which could stop destructive members.
You actually won't find a one-size-fits-all help. The only thing you can do is to keep calm and nice whatever happens. If YOU get triggered to be aggressive as well, the mood in your project will decline rapidly and the peaceful users will be scared away as well. And you have no point in being an example for others anymore.
This said, you may need to ban some trolls from time to time, if they keep making trouble even when you and others try your best to help.
[...] Offending is often a result of lack of education [...]
Apparently you have never had to deal with upper management or higher ranks at research institutions. Any peasant can throw expletives around, but it takes a well-trained mind to weaponise passive-aggressiveness to the truly astounding degree that I have witnessed in professors and heads of departments.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I see what you did there.
One correction:
This is far from new. I remember this behavior from dial-up BBSes in the 1980s. However, these people were ignored and sometimes had their comments removed by Sysops because they obviously had zero value, and when every byte of disk space counts, you drop the obvious turds. Now, however, the enforcement model on most forums has shifted from "protect the quality content" to "protect vulnerable users" and so passive bullying is totally acceptable but if someone were to call these users out on it, they would be banned. This is why it is tolerated now, and proliferating, because it lets nobodies act like swaggering powerful internet gods.
I mention the FreeBSD community because they are notorious for this. Users write in with normal questions, and the default response -- people seem to rush to their keyboards to do this -- is to accuse the user of being stupid, incorrect or under-knowledgeable about the operating system. Others defend them in order to keep BSD their own little special club, and to do that, they need to exile outsiders, which allowing this sociopathic behavior does nicely through alienating those outsiders.
Alternative Right.
I've come across this on a number of forums. What puzzles me is how the trolls are enabled by the rest of the so-called reasonable posters. The solution is to move on.
I don't know my password on stackoverflow by heart, so It's hard to keep up to date on it [...] So I visit there when Google shows it as a response to my questions.
If you use Google often, you can sign into Stack Overflow with Google. First look up your Stack Overflow password and log in. Then visit your user page on Stack Overflow, click Edit Profile & Settings, and click My Logins. From there you can sign in with Google, and your Google identity will be added to your Stack Overflow account.
While they do not, at first sight, seem similar, the computing and parenting groups may both contain a high proportion of insecure people, some of whom attempt to bolster their self-esteem by putting down others. It is straightforward social-animal dominance hierarchy behavior, where chi beats up psi after being beaten up by phi, complicated by many of the aggressive people on internet forums having low status in real life.
Or, perhaps, the Forums that you visit are the regular places where people who use phrases like 'Putin's trolls in training' visit. In other words, the places you hang out are where people like you hang out, and you're a cynical long-time netizen.
Internet trolls and video game griefers are just as broken in real life as you've always suspected, according to a new psychology paper by Canadian researchers. It turns out that the same folks who love to disrupt online conversations for the"lulz" are likely to also exhibit some pretty nasty personality traits in general.
Well, no shit... someone who looks at all the things they could do in their spare time and decides to use it on making other people miserable has personality issues? I can understand theft, fraud and sabotage and to some degree revenge because it's for a purpose. But the kind of people who slash the seats on the bus for no gain, no fame, no particular target in mind just pissing in the well for the hell of it.... I don't get it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Citation needed pretty much pisses me off. It makes sense that if someone writes an article about Clinton going to area 51 to meet the aliens we need at least a citation. But for so much more, not really.
But the one that sends me into a monitor punching rage is when I go to stack overflow and someone asks a solid and very useful "opinion" question and gets shut down with some crap about the question being not relevant to the forum or some crap. Asking for everyone's favourite cheese would not be appropriate. Asking for which is the best library for accessing bluetooth on a raspberry is. Or which is the best 3D modeling software for making models in Unity.
My simple litmus test of how badly stackoverflow is now failing us is that I would say that nearly 80% of the questions I am researching have some answers, but the discussion has been shutdown.
What is funny is that not one programmer that I know wants these shutdowns. Not a single one. And as for a "programming" question being more relevant. They go out of date as well. Ask how to convert a int to a string has probably changed in C++ two or more times in the last decade.
To be even more specific, I would say the general opinion questions are some of the most profound. For instance it is very nice to know if you have lost your Oracle database connection. But more importantly would be a question such as, "What is the best programming toolset for making portable iOS/Android games?"
I would read through the answers and maybe I would discover that Qt has brought up their game and is the best way, or someone might suggest different environments they tried and could suggest one for a first person, but another for the candy crush sorts. It is discussions like this that have profoundly changed what I do. It was right here on slashdot that I have discovered many interesting technologies such as who I use for hosting, who I use for domains, which IDE I use and even which languages I use. Needless to say these weren't asked in the format, "How do I print something to the screen in Visual Basic?"
If administrators want users like that you should just close the page and never return. Preferably after sending a fuck you note to an admin.
gdewilde@gmail.com
So, they are suggesting recursion?
Have gnu, will travel.
So basically it's the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory once again.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
It's pretty easy to get it.
I won't provide links, but I'll point you in the right direction:
People who can't openly express their anger and frustration, do so, anonymously, at unrelated targets for whatever the reasons are that they can't push back effectively.
Trolls seek the power to strike back at the Empire and they get their energy from the outrage directed toward them.
Ignoring them is the digital equivalent of the problems they already have.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
"read the source code"
"fix it yourself and submit a patch"
"a trivial problem"
"Won't be fixed"
"posted to wrong maillist" (with no indication of which maillist it should be posted to)
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
It's the internet. You go in anonymous and you come out unscared.
Glad I could help.
That aside, after well over 20 years online I think it's pretty safe to say that "abusiveness" in a given forum/channel/newroos/board/echo/whatever is directly proportional to the average education level represented in that forum/channel/... . This is even more so an affirmation to "dealing" with this problem as suggested above. Be polite, don't be annoying, don't be easyly insulted, don't easyly insult and don't feed or be bothered by the trolls. Those are just about the basics of online etiquette.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Do you honestly think there were gold old days ? I can always recall seeing a huge number of unhelpful, or worse downright incorrect responses given. The problem lies with the population growth, there were always a larger portion of a$$hats than helpful people it was just easier to filter them out with a smaller number of responses. The noob flaming is just as bad as it has always been as well. You just need to be careful who you trust. I generally find that good info comes in clusters, someone will post some decent suggestions and it will generate some corrections and refinements from others', while llama threads flame out quickly. The problem is that many of the very technical folks have gotten tired of the boards and either retired from the industry, or declined to participate often. Gone are the days when you find driver authors or system code writers browsing the tech forums for fun and entertainment. This place used to overflow with highly qualified sysadmins and engineers, not so many these days. Don't despair though there are still people out there that will help you if you are patient enough. What IS better these days is documentation availability, look around for a eBook or a manual on what you need, everyone has needed help at some point and they have sources they found that help at/from.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Should we be asking the moderators of the site why that kind of attitude is being fostered? Also, did the OP (if there is the ability) contact a mod regarding the overall attitude? Yes, you can ignore them - which takes as much energy because first you have to let go and remind yourself that this anonymous a--hole is someone whose opinion should mean nothing to you - but in a well run forum, this should be part of the introduction to all users (as was mentioned here) and mods should be reminding users (offline so they have an opportunity to save some face) that kind of criticism won't be tolerated. I ended up being a mod at an open source project specifically because the environment was accepting and open and I wanted to have a hand in preserving that. I've learned as much researching answers to 'noob' questions as I have from seasoned devs and I've always believed that making new users comfortable with asking questions (maybe with some guidelines on how and what info to include) leads to greater involvement and that benefits everyone.
Proudly hiding goatse in links, blaming Cowboy Neal, stating 640kb Will Be Enough For Anyone and wondering about Beowulf Clusters Of... on Slashdot since 1998.
The internet was always an unregulated Wild West. We were just so happy for the good it brought that the bad was worth it. Then we got used to its ubiquity, took the good for granted and the bad started getting under our skin.
It's been resoundingly debunked that present society can foot the bill on such an extreme fart-tolerant posture on free-speech purity. There just aren't enough clothespins in the known universe to make this ideal workable.
After a while, clipping the seven thousandth clothespin onto your nose begins to feel like something that imperialist Europeans would have quickly attributed to the Song Dynasty.
Call me fascist if you will, but I'm going to pass on self-inflicted free-speech warrior lotus nose.
I hate the ones that say in an extremely snarky way, "Do a search of the boards, it's been answered "X" times already." You almost always hear those on boards that a bazillion threads and you end up spending days sorting through the dross and still don't find anything relevant to your question (which was why you posted the question in the first place). The problem is that common decency and civility are not common on the net at all. It's too easy to be an asshole when there is no way the other party can come through your screen and kick your ass for it.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
There are many, many useless posts in fora these days. A lot of it is dis-information; ranging from deliberately unhelpfull to downright dangerous. And many of those posts are answers to questions.
But, a few of those useless posts are the questions, themselves. These seem to fall into two broad categories:
1) I want to implement this complex, fragile and esoteric solution to a simple problem, but can't figure out how to do it, and
2) I want to implement this common solution to a complex problem, but don't really want to read how to do it, or understand the implications.
Usually, the answers I see to these sorts of questions fall into your two groups of "useless answers". The first answer is usually phrased "You are trying to solve the wrong problem", but I guess you could paraphrase it into "Why would you want to do that in the first place?" This answer is usually given by someone who sees that you are taking the wrong approach to solving your bigger issue, and is trying to guide you to the simpler solution.
The second answer is usually phrased "Please read this handy guide that someone took days to write to assist you with this exact problem" (OK, I lie; it is usually phrased "Why don't you Read the Fine Manual?"), but I guess that you, in your frustration at not receiveing an immediate, detailed-yet-simple-to-follow technical answer to your question might see this as "Why don't you look at X poorly written documentation page " . Of course, your problem is complex, and you haven't given all the relevant facts (some, you don't even know that you need to know), but you'd rather that someone else take the (possibly hours) out of their day to read the documentation, research your issue, locate or invent a solution, write out the solution as a set of tailored-to-your-situation simple-to-follow instructions, and post those instructions immediately in reply to your query.
Buy the way, "You're welcome". But, then again, should I have done all that in answer to your question, you wouldn't have thanked me anyway.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
I've encountered a few of these people lately, too. Even worse is the type that I call "big fish in a little pond": someone who spends a ton of time responding to questions in a particular forum, but sometimes makes assertions that are grossly misleading or dead wrong, and attacks anyone posting information that undermines their message. I figure some of those are paid shills (the ones who consistently defend products/services in support forums) and others are probably just toxic people who love feeling authoritative.
I haven't figured out a universal way to deal with these people, but my best results so far have been to immediately call them out for being jerks, and if they persist, follow up with a post letting them (and the other readers) know that they have been blocked. Of course, I block them as well.
I help with several forums and yes, sometimes my answers can be a bit rude but there is usually a reason. Those asking questions don't realized that we are not sitting in front of their computers, we do not have the immediate magic fix, we actually need the user input to help us to help them. sometimes it is extremely hard not to tell the person to pack up their computer and send it back because they are too stupid to own one. It gets frustrating when the user will not answer all the questions asked about their computer or they refused to try some of the fixes for whatever reason, what makes it worse is when they are also getting help from several other forums resulting in wasting time where others could be help or conflicts because we dont know about the other possible fix being tried.
too many times questions could be answered a whole lot faster using google than waiting for someone to respond to your tech question. some forums are strictly moderated but they will allow some of what you may consider unhelpful comments because without seeing those comments, were they really unhelpful, possible solutions that did not work or did you not understand what they were asking of you?
fix your own twisted and closed mind first.
The internet is a place of groupthink, or more to point given the anonymous nature of it, a place of groupunconcious. Forums offer a place to speak our minds. Not the normal "me speaking to you" variety, but the unfiltered "I wouldn't say this if you held a gun to head" variety. It's easy to say the nasty things in the backs of our minds if there's no one else around..... Or if everyone else is around. (The anonimity (sp.) of the crowd) In an environment where this is the norm, there will inevetibly be a portion that cannot distinguish between the two. They will spew out the most vile and evil trash they can conceive because the reponse they receive beats no response at all. And so all of their positive reenforcement results from that which comes froms the worst parts of their psyche. And so the trashers trash, the spewers spew, and those of us trying to get real answers are overwhelmed in a giant compost heap of hate.
Computing/IT attracts people on the autistic spectrum (I'm one) some of whom find it very hard to understand how anybody could possibly think differently than themselves (I'm not usually one of these). It's becoming clear that autism is about as common as left-handedness - just not always as extremely presented. You don't have to be like Rain Man to be autistic.
I've had my share of negative forum experiences (perlmonks for example) but I perservered and got a decent answer in the end, after having shown that I hadn't just dropped my problem on the forum without RTFMing, RTFMLing and RTFGing first! I also remember having called someone out on their unhelpful attitude, and eventually they provided the best answer!
Ban the fuckers, they contribute nothing positive at all.
Eat the rich.
It would be better if you were joking. You think there are two kinds of people who have kids. Ones who do it to validate their existence, and ones who do it by accident.
There are more types than that.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
One of the things I like about Slashdot is its moderating system and the differentiation between AC posts and those by re-used nyms in addition to its folding structure. Makes it easy to skip lowly valued posts (which usually turn out to be trash). That does a fair job of helping to sift the grain from the chaff.
Why not try Slashdot's moderating system?
Aggressive forum users are a sign of the failure of the moderators.
The specific behaviour the OP describes is more a sign of the type of forum they're participating in, it's, unfortunately, fairly common behaviour among geek/techie personalities. Go to a forum dealing with, say, gardening or pets or childcare and you'll very rarely see this sort of thing, the standard response there is sympathy and advice. So the best advice perhaps is to hold your nose and ignore the crap, or try posting to several different technical forums in the hope that you'll get good advice from at least one of them.
Moderation, I agree, is one way of dealing with this, e.g. Stackexchange does a pretty good job of keeping things on-topic, but sometimes you just have to mentally lint-filter the crap in the hope of finding the nuggets of good advice.
I'm present on quite a few forums outside of IT, mostly travel and motoring. Aggressive behaviour, which on forums is mostly passive aggressive behaviour, is definitely not limited to technical forums. Any type of forum, if poorly moderated will devolve into a shit slinging competition simply because some people can get away with it. Parents forums have been amongst the most vicious I've seen unless they are strictly moderated (try telling a parent they're raising a bad kid... their response gets worse the more true it is).
Moderation is a tricky thing to get right, under-moderating will result in forums being ruled by trolls. Over-moderation will result in good users being afraid to post. Biased moderation will result in a stagnant user base because people who dont like an echo chamber will go elsewhere. Slashdot manages to do all of these things, but none of them particularly well so failure it tends to balance everything out.
Conflict and disagreement is inevitable in any forum, online or otherwise. That is not automatically a bad thing. Disagreement and conflict handled properly can be constructive as it improves and strengthens ideas. Whether it's constructive or destructive depends on the skill of the moderators. A good mod will allow some conflict and disagreement but, like a well trained butler, knows when it's time to step in and control the situation. Its inevitable that some debates become heated, even a good and constructive member can fly off the handle and it is not always the fault of another user, even if they did set them off, good mods control these situations just before they get out of hand.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If the forum is for experts, you discourage extreme rudeness but tacitly endorse a bit of elitism. It will push noobs away and maintain the high-end focus.
If the forum is an open community, you have rules that prohibit insults and flaming---and you apply those rules to elitist snobbery. Eventually, your moderation system will purge the offenders.
If posting frequency, forum flair, and prominence of posts are determined by reputation, the only way to be seen and heard is to be helpful.
Rewarding desirable behavior is always more effective than punishing poor behavior. Psychology doesn't have good guidance on every question related to human nature, but in this particular area the evidence is quite clear.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Yes and no. In this case it sounds like those users should just be banned or something. On a forum of a very large size then it becomes problematic if we're not talking an isolated incident. Where ever you have humans you can have human error. Both moderators and users are human.
You are always likely to have nuisance users after the community hits a small size and normally it's not too difficult for moderators to deal with that. If you hit the point where you have millions of users on a conventional forum though, especially ones that spend a lot of time there as part of a major hobby in their lives/spend a lot of their freetime there rather than hit and run style commenting then you're going to get a few psychopaths. It's a given with that many people.
Different communities create natural problems and have their own natural patterns and there's not always one rule for all. I've found in some situations I've found myself in a toxic atmosphere and that I've too become sometimes toxic. Real time venues is a major one. There's a big difference over the years from being mid level to senior.
As a senior the first thing that happens is that when there you help others down the ladder to quickly clear the queue. The lower you are on the ladder the better in a sense, the lowest can in theory be helped by everyone else on the ladder. This is a great natural pattern at first but bitterness can arise quickly as you advance the ladder. Sometimes there are users that are unable to help others help them or to help themselves and not to be mean but some you wonder how they even managed to get onto the internet. Some want you to do things for them or are completely helpless. You can start to get irate because some of these people are possible the type that make your life a misery in the making, that make a huge mess and then just move on leaving people like me to untangle the legacy mess. It's alright when people are new but sometimes you can tell when there's possibly more to it than that, when they look like they don't have what it takes to not be a liability or a burden on others. Help channels can disproportionately attract those because well they're the most likely to need help and frequently. You try not to be mean or judgemental but sometimes that's difficult.
Then you start to notice that sometimes those giving help aren't always entirely impartial and might give bad advice or push their own opinions. Sometimes you find yourself fighting against that rather than helping others. Then when it comes to your own help topics there's all kinds of problems that can lead to confrontation. Some people give you ridiculous solutions when you know it should be simpler or repeat some precept they've learnt by rote automatically without considering various nuances or potential exceptions. This is especially common when it comes to standards, ideals or concerns. Dogmatic helpers can be a huge problem. Someone learns a best practice which is really a rule of thumb and then it becomes the only practice. Pompousness and arrogance is really common. A lot of people get some way up the ladder and then it gets to them. You can have a bad case of things such as DK or people who study too much without sufficient practice. Sometimes people stick by what works for them in their unique scenario and then apply it to everyone. You have people promoting wacky solutions to scale for ten million users before concepts such as KISS and YAGNI when dealing with newbies.
Then there's the inordinate difficulty in convincing users that you are an advanced user and to break from their traditional script. A really frustrating one is when you ask a simple question and they start to insist on knowing the problem because they think there's a better solution. I understand that, I've often had to ask people what they are trying to solve myself, but these people ask for that before even answering the question and these are basic questions. It starts to be like dealing with people in an Indian call centre who try to run you thr
I post tech questions to Experts-Exchange. Either their moderators are doing a yeoman's job or it's just a bunch of well-mannered experts actually willing to help, I suspect both are true. They once charged an annual fee but I believe they've dropped that recently.
I remember when parents were banned from the internet and for good reason as well.
I'm a little weary about the premise for this, I'm a pretty active member of other forums and I find that people either "get" how to ask for help online or they don't. You get the types that are looking to woodshed, the types that are frustrated and want to take it out on the subject matter experts or the devs or people that want to use the program/service for nefarious purposes. If you're going to ask for help, answering the "why do you want to do that?" question should be a given, and you should be open to being told whatever you're doing is not the right tool for the job, conversely people helping you should be open to you replying that maybe you're using the only tool you've got. A more civil approach is probably best, on both sides.
First, there should be clear guidelines on conduct for a forum. Second, moderate tightly to those guidelines. Third, boot those who don't follow the guidelines.
The current so called President exhibits that effect, We saw it start last summer (2016). It is called bullying and using near insults.
The best thing to do, is ask the person opposing you to help you understand their point of view. And ask them to elaborate further. Sometimes what is confusing to us is clear to "them".
And then you slide in your "what if's" and ask how your "what if's" would work with their views.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Sign on a compuserve forum circa 1980:
"Please don't feed the Trolls. Thank you."
I think it was inspired by a sign in the New York Zoo. And possibly the bridge in the game "Adventure".
Here's another quote:
"An armed society is a polite society."
It seems the problem is that the internet users think they are out of your reach. ;-)
However, it should be understood that the internet is -not- really anonymous!
Muting them is probably the best solution for everyone involved...
I've noticed this a LOT in OSX forums.
Essentially, a variant on the whole "You're doing it wrong", or "There's no need to do that".
I'm not sure why this is the case.
Need to whack them down. Everyone is a noob at the beginning. Ask away. I'd rather answer the question a bunch of times then to let someone learn sometimes painful lessons all over again. I asked when I was a young parent. I couldn't ask my parents, however I could ask my siblings that were all older than I am. I knew a boy scout master that had been in boy scouts for over 50 years. He had a unique perspective on how society is deteriorating due to the crazy lawless left. Need to help each other.
and it is often met with derision. I used to post on G+ 3D printing but gave up after people complained that the solutions I was posting to problems were all too expensive for people to try despite providing links to inexpensive parts sources and demonstrating the principles I espoused with video, photos, and measured data.
Years ago I developed techniques to fabricate electrostatic loudspeakers very inexpensively and was active in DIY audio forums. It became so ridiculous to try to provide useful info against the people who were shouting about cables and magic rocks, polarity of resistors, and other BS, that I finally gave up.
America has been dumbing down for decades and elevating stupidity to high art. We are stupid and we deserve whatever the politicians we elect do to us.
I'm building my 3rd and last 3D printer now and will soon abandon the forums and move on to some other endeavor.
I agree, SE is really annoying. I apparently can't help anyone there because I don't have enough "reputation" or something. I guess 38 years of dealing with computers just doesn't quite qualify me for their little club.
As for people who respond to questions with "Why would you even want to do that in the first place?", I absolutely HATE that. While it is of course a valid response in some instances, it seems to be the goto answer for the first responders to a far higher percentage of technical questions than actually merit that reply. Unless the opposite is truly obvious why not assume that the asker is not an idiot, and answer the question he's asking, instead of questioning the question. Makes me crazy.
If you answer even idiots politely and properly you increase the signal to noise on the internet. If the answer is simply "Go f'n google it" then the next person Googling it may just end up with your unhelpful response, get frustrated, and go find an internet forum.
One would hope that the impolite responses would be moderated away -- in the same way as hoping the stupid questions are moderated away.
LinkedIn has historically had the "fire and forget" problem: someone comes on, ask a question, and then disappears off the face of the Earth. Did they read one of the answers, and get utility out of it? Did Dementors fly off with them, and they are now trapped in Azakaban, in desperate need of someone from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to rescue them? Who the heck knows?!?!
The other problem is when someone asks a question, it provokes a long discussion, with a large number of thoughtful -- and presumably, time consuming posts -- and then comes back and deletes the whole thing, so that their boss doesn't discover that they are getting their answers from the Internet.
Perhaps the correct answer is: most Internet forums really, really suck, and are managed badly by the people who create them.
It isn't always "Homework", sometimes the seemingly arbitrary artificial constraints are there for legitimate reasons and it would just take too long to explain them all, especially since why they are constraints is irrelevant. If you've ever been in this situation, you know to expect a lot of "well why are you doing X? Just do Y instead, that's the right way". I know that's the right way, and if I could do it that way I wouldn't be asking the question and specifically including the conditions that prevent Y from being possible.
I believe the correct response would have been for you to provide the constraints anyway.
You may have arrived at 'X', which is an incredibly ass way of doing the job, instead of 'Y' because of your constraints.
But given your constraints, perhaps a better answer than 'X' or 'Y' would be 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', or 'L'.
By limiting yourself to "how do I make 'X' work for this situation (I am unable to figure this out myself)?" type questions, you are robbing yourself of better answers than bludgeoning 'X' into a 'Y'-shaped hole.