Things that well-meaning A2Kers do that I find horribly rude

It's time to beg the question. I'm not quite certain what Craven means. Can someone do a brief synopsis?

If people ask for help, either don't help them..or do...but don't make them feel like crap for asking.

If insincere people concoct sob stories for pity, don't bring attention to it.

We're here as a resource for assistance on the web. If we aren't helpful, it hurts the site's reputation.

Craven believes that it is rude when:

People don't take a poster seriously on the relationship threads. I think that he feels that if a person is truthful, and is disbelieved, it can have a deleterious effect on the person.

People show their annoyance when a student is obviously asking for a member to do his homework.

Call me old fashioned but, as far as the homework questions go, I usually avoid them unleass I get really annoyed at how the student, without any thought or editing of the questions (They dont even demonstrate the desire to "put it in their own words"), they just post the question and expect some plug in answer. I have tried to "steer" the student into a direction that would require some work on their own behalf. Usually, someone else will jump in with the answers and any semblance of understanding is lost.
The medium isnt conducive to peripatetic learning. Its all "Insert proper answer here<___________"

If some find it rude , then its probably better for me to just ignore the thread entirely.

I like the "English as a second language" questions as they have been selective in their content and require the learner become familiar with colloquial speech, thus indicating that theres someone on the other end who is desirous of understanding the ENglish usage.

0.02$ plain.

But crazy Aunt Tilly can be very, very persistent & ruin the thread! :wink:

With "our old, home-grown, entrenched trolls" I have tried several approaches: ignoring their comments/threads completely, positive feedback when they seem to have made a genuine effort to contribute (I'm a teacher. :wink: ), responding with a quick, deflective comment then moving back to the thread topic fast, but every now & then ..... I lose my patience in a way that I'd preferred I hadn't. But then I think: Hey, they have to take some responsibility for their behavior, too!

I might also point out that advising others of their problems with their behavior is actually considered more rude than the original behavior.

And yes, I'm aware of the irony of my posting that....

I usually wait till after the date before which they need the answer with great urgency if I answer those. ;-)



You are a natural Phoenix. I am not sure if you remember, but many years ago I even asked you to help write a page about finding stuff on the internet for The Raven's Realm.

Not many people will get as good as you are at it, but I think you are right in that anyone with average intelligence can become competent.

Thing is, sometimes even experienced searchers don't know the right query. I have worked with search engines professionally for years now, and I still run into cases where I discover a search term that gets much better results than the term(s) I had initially tried.

But don't get me wrong, there are a lot of lazy people out there. Sometimes in the web development forums people will ask for someone else to write them a significant amount of code for free for example. I usually mention that they are asking for a lot of free money and try to point them on the right track to solve it themselves while telling them that their request is a bit much.

A lot of times the laziness is irritating, especially when the person asking the question is expecting an answer that would be a lot of work and aren't even putting any effort into the question. I usually try to let them know that as nicely as possible with a bit of help but I've given the rude "RTFM" as well. "RTFM" is a legitimate reply, they need to know that sometimes but I've been trying to go about that more nicely than I have in the past these days.



No no, I strongly recommend ignoring the ones who are irritatingly lazy. I just don't think they deserve to be flamed if someone decides to tell them they are being lazy.

If someone's so irritatingly lazy that I can't respond nicely, I try to follow Thumper's mom's advice as well. But sometimes I've been able to engage people to the point where they become more involved in their own search for knowledge.

It doesn't come easy for everyone. I've had a couple of friends come to the site on my recommendation but not be able to get much information out of it because they were not very engaging. They weren't forum users and it's not always easy for even very literate people to be engaging on the internet but that's what it often comes down to if you want a good answer on a forum.

And when I have the patience, I engage them to bring them in. The friends I've had who've been scolded merely gave up on the site while others who were engaged more by the members learned to improve the way they use forums to ask questions.



I consider that more like trolling than asking a legitimate question. A question like that looks to me to be intentional flame bait. I personally am a fan of not feeding trolls, but care a heck of a lot less at flame bait attracting flames than a clueless or lazy question.



I think it's because most of the new ones are drive-bys and they don't come back. Whereas the entrenched trolls are often a pain in the ass for a long time even if they are ignored.

Those are issues I'd really like to address with the help of an ignore feature. It's easy to decide to ignore a troll but then harder to do so when they are all over the site.



I've seen those and sometimes I'll post the answers if not for the poster for others who will find the question when they search for the same thing.

I've even been surprised once when someone posted something like that, got scolded but was then engaging and noted that she'd already answered everything herself and was checking her work.

If I were a good person all the time I'd probably ask such a person what they thought the answers were and try to get them to think about it.

Sometimes people come around, admittedly I think more often than not they are just lazy (some are even too lazy to come back to their thread and ask for answers by email) but we shouldn't let that get under our skin since that won't help us or them any.



msolga, to be honest I don't recall anyone I've read here who deals with persistent and really idiotic trolling as well as you do. Your animal threads often attract some really mean-spirited posts from idiots who translate their opposition to gun-control into a desire to mock anyone who exhibits any love for animals as a direct challenge to their hunting "right" when it has nothing at all to do with hunting or guns.

I've often noticed your deflections and polite attempts to bring the thread back on topic and wanted to treat the trolls rudely myself. What has often given me restraint is that if you can be so damned patient with the jerks when they are going out of their way to be rude to you I feel compelled to restrain my own tongue.

I don't know how you do it, as I have a hard enough time when I see it happening to you but I think you do a damned good job!

One feature I am seriously considering is a form of self-moderation for threads, where the thread starter would have some way to keep the trolls of their threads and your threads that attract the jerks were one of the biggest motivations.

I haven't quite figured out how the feature will work, if the thread starter's would be able to remove posts, ban users from posting to their thread(s), if the thread starter will just have more vote down power than normal in a (possible, only being considered) voting system, or if unilateral ignores would be bilaterally enforced (e.g. ignore a troll and your posts are also removed from their view) but believe me in that I'm working on it because no matter how nice I've seen you be and how much patience I've seen you demonstrate there are times that the nuts are just too persistent.

In the past the only way to help would be a top-down in the form of moderator intervention, but my current goals are to become much less restrictive while putting more control in the end-user's hands.

In short, in the future top-down censorship will only be used for spam and illegal posts. No flames will be removed and "banning" will essentially cease to exist. Of course, I need to make tools and ways that the good citizens don't have to put up with too much trolling and such and one of the hardest technological challenges I've faced are the ways to handle it.

I've been thinking about it for almost 2 years now (since February of 2006 when I started making the new A2K) and I consider this kind of thing the most important thing to solve for the new platform.

We started a rewrite of the rewrite that we'll rush out to get a new foundation online but our next step is making the features and tools to make coexistence with trolls less of a pain. I'm not sure if I'll solve this, but I'm giving it the good ole college try.



I'm not sure if I agree. For example I'd never have learned what is and isn't rude if my mom followed your line of thinking. I also think that there can be a qualitative difference in the way one criticizes and I don't think constructive criticism is necessarily rude.

That being said, I noted that I felt somewhat rude for bringing it up at all and tried to be as polite as I could. I've been meaning to post something like this for over a year but each time I was reminded to do so it was because of a specific post I read that reminded me and decided to wait so it didn't look like I'm calling someone out.



I didn't feature the thread, and haven't had any input into the feature/de-feature process for over a year.

I suspect I've offended you with this thread, and am not sure why but it wasn't my intention. I don't have any recent posts (of yours or anyone you might be defending) in mind and tried to make it constructive.

A lot of what I'm talking about comes from ways I have been trying to improve my own interactions. I feel that a few years ago I was not a very good internet citizen and a lot of the things I'm criticizing are things I've done poorly with in the past.

Craven- I am absolutely delighted that you have developed what I consider an extremely important insight. I think that over the years we have all had to go through some maturing and seasoning with this new form of communication that is the internet.

Craven...

your thread/post is anything but rude.

It takes a lot more than what you've done here to offend me. I just like to hassle people sometimes, especially when they're being so idealistic.

Carry on with the windmill jousting.

Craven--

What does RTFM mean?

Ms. Olga--

I agree with Craven. When you get to have you're going to have golden slippers and a crown of stars and a ring for every finger. You've earned them.

DrewDad--

I'd guess that Craven's thread was featured because it opens a discussion of long-term A2K policy--not simply because Craven is Craven The Onlie Beggetor.

Of course,all pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others.

You might be a downtrodden pig, but you're an articulate, logically-reasoning downtrodden pig.

"RTM" means "read the manual." I shall leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine what the "F" means.

I certainly don't feel downtrodden, although I'll remind Craven of the old saying about teaching a pig to sing.

DrewDad--

Once you teach a pig to sing, you have a lifetime of oinks and grunting.

You have no idea how odd that post looks when made by Father Christmas.



:wink:

If someone asks who said (wrote) "Life in a state of nature . . . is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."--i would likely advise them that the answer can be found by typing an exact quote into the search window of a search engine--and that if it doesn't return a response, then you don't have an exact quote.

If someone asks a tendentious question, such as asking for a explanation of how the reparations imposed by the Allies on Germany in 1919 lead to the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic and the subsequent rise of Hitler--i'd likely ignore it, since that is not what happened. Or i might point out that that was not what happened, and i might even suggest they search for "Versailles Diktat Myth" and do some reading. Mostly, though, i avoid tendentious questions--the sort of "have you stopped beating your wife" questions which entail one or an entire series of assumptions. It would usually be too much trouble to explain why the question is tendentious, and founded on false assumptions--and in fact could hurt the student in one sense, that being that the instructor must believe that tendentious crap, and expects to have it regurgitated by the student.

If someone asks, however, if the United States Congress is modeled on the English Parliament, i am prepared not only to say no, but to explain that answer. I consider an open question which entails no assumptions to be worth answering, and often (in fact, almost always) one which it would be difficult, nearly impossible, to answer correctly and in detail by doing a web search.

Sometimes i just give search criteria if the matter is too complex , or i'm feeling lazy that day.

All of the examples i used are actual questions (or as near as i can recall) which were asked here. I'm not going to do someone's homework for them. The nature of the question will determine for me whether or not the student is just being lazy, or can actually benefit from a detailed answer. I have also frequently tried to explain to people here how to use a search engine effectively, and i have often gone out and found a few links and posted them.

Oh, i forgot to mention this:

ESL questions? I will happily answer the same type of question over and over again. Any English speaker who thinks English rules of grammar, syntax and especially spelling rules are intuitive and logical doesn't have sufficient command of their own language to answer such questions. Even well-informed and intelligent native speakers of English can find themselves at a loss as to how to explain why some expression or part of speech functions the way it does.

With ESL, i have two general rules . . . well, four actually. The first three are:

patience, patience, patience.

The fourth is to always reconstruct the students writing in a form as close to the original as possible. You may have what you think is a more succinct or clever way of saying something, but if what the student proposes is not actually wrong, they always prefer their own form of expression, and would prefer that you correct what they wrote, but otherweise leave it intact.

Wow! Setanta just sent me to a search engine window.

ten·den·tious also ten·den·cious
adj.
Marked by a strong implicit point of view; partisan: a tendentious account of the recent elections.