One place this shows up far too often is in the Mechanics area. NOthing is worse than repeatedly watching people arrogantly give replies to mechanincal questions. It appears that it is often painful for some of the more experienced to give answers to the noobs. If it is so painful, why freakin bother?

The sad part is that questions often don't get asked because people are afraid to be belittled. Personally i welcome it. I am on here to learn about cycling and personally don't give a crap if someone is rude or arrogant as long as i get what i came here looking for. I don't personally know one sole on this board so it makes it a little hard to really give a crap what somebody says.

I think a lot of the people enjoy being jerks anonymously of forums like this because they are not allowed to get away with it in real life. I can understand that. So maybe i have to agree that people should just be a little less sensitive. If an individual that you have never met in your entire life can type some words on a computer that hurts your feelings, than there are probably larger problems.

The thing that really mystifies me is people that get irritated with repeat questions. That does torque me off. People that get irritated with that and create things like the sticky $500 Mountain Bike thread, must think the forums are just designed for their happiness. I don't care if i read 1000 questions of people wanting to know what $500 mountain bike to buy. I don't have to read the post. I think having a sticky is a fine idea except it doesn't actually work.

That $500 MTB sticky has just about every topic in the world discussed and certainly isn't a very good tool for a noob looking for buying advice. There is much, much, gleening to be done to pull anything useful out of that thread.