I am posting this on some of my other cycling forums.

BE NICE

Quite often a new or somewhat new member will ask a question that has maybe even been done to death before. But unless this new member has searched thru thousands of threads he or she may not know it. So I say either answer the question, or just let it slide. As I say ------------- be nice------------there is no reason for some of the snide remarks I see posted.

Thank you for this post!! I am such a newbie when it comes to fixing up bikes and I still am learning all the terminology and teaching myself at 52 how all the bike parts work and its hard for someone just starting out wanting to learn about bike repair and basic maintenance to quickly learn all the lingo and bike speak.. I try to search for old threads as much as possible but there are so many here that sometimes it is just easier to post a new thread and hope for a nice reply. I do have to say though I have gotten several really nice replies over the past several months from several members but I have seen my share of snippy comments on some other posts, not mine but some other ones.

I've got $10 that says we're about to see an avalanche of recumbent threads ...

Let's hope for warm weather so he's not board and sitting at the keyboard all day.

Well said.

I've been on many forums for several years and the search feature doesn't work too well on many of them. (Absolutely worthless on a few of them).
Keep in mind that a newbie member usually has a limited "bicycle vocabulary". They don't know which terms to enter into the search window.

This is a great sentiment. Let's also remember this info, from the forum guidelines that are listed in the FAQs:

Intelligence

We’re a community with quality standards and expect our members will make a sincere effort to contribute their thoughts on interesting subjects in a meaningful and respectful manner. Posting messages and otherwise interacting on BikeForums is completely optional; many members often prefer to just read what others have to say. But if you do post, we expect that you’ll be respectful of the time of others by posting meaningfully.

Personally, I think that sometimes it's a no-win situation. If they post a question that's been asked before, they're told to do a search. If they first do a search and then post to a 10-year-old thread, they're taken to task for resurrecting a zombie thread. I think unless there's another current thread on the same subject, a new thread won't hurt anyone.

It's the internet. Kids should be monitored by the guardian just as if they were in a city park.
adults can click on or scroll past the less desirable posts

sums it up.

A good example of what I am talking about.

#2

No, just an example of how some people have zero sense of humor.

#4

If we're going to have an actual discussion about this, here are my thoughts. Feel free to tear into me.

The mods enforce rules which enforce certain norms regarding foul and inappropriate language, name-calling, sock puppetry, and the like. But there seems no way to reliably enforce the forum guideline that I posted above, in post #8, which recommends that people post intelligent and meaningful information. At least, the mods seem to do nothing about it. (Though they might send private messages to some posters; I don't know.)

I think most people on bf are actually pretty tolerant of newbies who ask for advice on chain lube and whether disc brakes are superior to rim brakes. Sure, there might be a few tongue-in-cheek posts ("Oh, no, not another chain lube thread!"), but I don't see rudeness very often. And I think most bf'ers are pretty tolerant of people who make mistakes -- say, people who post verifiable info that turns out to be incorrect; it helps if the person acknowledges the error -- but with this being the internet, that happens rarely.

However, I think that most of us have our limits, and some posters really push against those limits: people who repeatedly post information that is off-topic and even inaccurate, who post topics to the wrong forums, who derail threads. People who feel compelled to tell others how they should ride, what types of machines they should ride, how they should fit, etc -- especially when such "advice" was never requested in the first place. That is NOT being "nice" -- it is presumptuous, haughty, and potentially harmful to forumers who don't yet know how to separate good info from nonsense. And it often violates the guideline referenced above, which recommends that we post intelligently and meaningfully.

When a poster repeatedly, chronically, violates that guideline, some other posters are bound to act as many would in "real life": by telling the insulting time-waster to stop wasting time. And in response to the suggestion that we can all just skip the posts and threads that we find stupid: how do we know they are stupid until we have already wasted our time on them?

Being a Mod is a thankless job. It never ends and without them this would be the wild west.

They do their best and after all... they do it for free.

While I, at times have disagreed with the mods, i'm a moderator on a very large VW forum so I understand what's involved. I respect them and appreciate what they do.

If you want to help... hit the report button and make them aware of chronic rule breakers and bad posts.

[/off soapbox]

#100

I can assure you there is zero interest in enforcing that part of the guidelines.

Now that you mention it, I haven't watched Roadhouse in a couple of years at least.
Thanks for the nudge!

It is hard to judge what someone's intelligence limitations are. But you're right. Maybe we should go over your posts more and do a little clean up.

Moderator's pet.

When I search for something I don’t go to BF search, I Google it, sometimes different phrasing, and I’ll add “forum” to the query if I want that type of info.

One thing I learned early on, no matter what forum, is to search for something first, get a little knowledge, and more importantly try to get the right terminology.

Even still, some, actually many, threads spin off into parts unknown, sometimes as boredom sets in and sometimes as two or more posters duke it out over some side topic.

What irritates me are the threads that really look like trolling and 50 posts go by and the OP has never replied. But when a new poster does a reasonable job of explaining and stays engaged with reasonable responses it would be nice if they got a pass.

John

Civility is the lubricant of society.

True, but some are justified and add a necessary spice to an otherwise lobotomized discussion.

Thanks, now you've started another which lube argument in this thread.