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Approach to newbies


Balloon

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48 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

The poster said something to the effect of "I don't understand electrics and I am not touching them". Now it was as plain as day that the originator did not have a clue about what was going on and that to solve their issue they were going to HAVE TO get deeply involved with their electrics, maybe not practically but certainly by lots of reading and learning. My reply was "First phrase - we can see that, plain as day. Second phrase - if that is your attitude then stand by for buying new battery banks every few weeks.

@Tony Brooks

 

i ask again, if I came into the pub and said; I have no clue about my battery can you help me, would you say to me “yes I can tell” 

Keeping my pub analogy. You know the kind of pub where you walk in and the door creaks, and everyone looks round at you with a wholly unwelcoming glare. 
 

is that the pub people on here want to be? 

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35 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Newbies here, could do themselves no end of favours using the search function, and phrasing their questions at the outset in a better manner than some do.

 

The purists, here, also do not like it when threads go off topic. 

 

So, to answer your question, yes, answers could be given in a politer manner than is often the case, but everyone communicates differently, as they do in life, so it's unlikely to happen.

 

You seem to be saying that newbies, (who have often have little knowledge of boats and boating and, by definition, no knowledge whatsoever of how the forum works), should modify their ways..... but the grumpfuttocks are excused because "everyone communicates differently".

 

 

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Its a bit of a microcosm of the bigger world. Years ago you had to get plumbing stuff from real plumbers. Whatever you asked for they would call it something else with a roll of the eyes and a curl of the lip. It would take years before you were accepted as a proper customer. Same with electrical suppliers, builders merchants and other places. Went to an ironmongers in Warwick and asked for 'Penny washers' thats big washers with a small hole, was sneeringly told I needed 'mudguard washers'. Went back next week for some more and asked for mudguard washers and was told with a smirk that I meant penny washers. There are boaters with the same attitude, unless you have arcane knowlege of rivets, a vocabulary full of no longer used names for bits of canal and bits of boats they will delight in trying to make you look a fool.

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1 minute ago, Bee said:

Its a bit of a microcosm of the bigger world. Years ago you had to get plumbing stuff from real plumbers. Whatever you asked for they would call it something else with a roll of the eyes and a curl of the lip. It would take years before you were accepted as a proper customer. Same with electrical suppliers, builders merchants and other places. Went to an ironmongers in Warwick and asked for 'Penny washers' thats big washers with a small hole, was sneeringly told I needed 'mudguard washers'. Went back next week for some more and asked for mudguard washers and was told with a smirk that I meant penny washers. There are boaters with the same attitude, unless you have arcane knowlege of rivets, a vocabulary full of no longer used names for bits of canal and bits of boats they will delight in trying to make you look a fool.

Yes this is a real thing and I experienced this today when going to the local plumbers merchants. It’s much more of a thing if you’re female. How dare

You know the name of an item you want, let alone its purpose. Anyway, it’s unpleasant. Why are we seeking to replicate it here. 

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3 minutes ago, Balloon said:

@Tony Brooks

 

i ask again, if I came into the pub and said; I have no clue about my battery can you help me, would you say to me “yes I can tell” 

Keeping my pub analogy. You know the kind of pub where you walk in and the door creaks, and everyone looks round at you with a wholly unwelcoming glare. 
 

is that the pub people on here want to be? 

It's getting to the nitty gritty: of course I saw Tony's post, I know he's someone who is respected, knowledgeable and helpful, but the newbie poster does not and could well take offence, it would have been OK if he'd put in a smiley emoticon, but that s maybe not his style. No one died.

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2 minutes ago, Balloon said:

@Tony Brooks

 

i ask again, if I came into the pub and said; I have no clue about my battery can you help me, would you say to me “yes I can tell” 

 

I see, it looks to me as if you are deliberately misunderstanding my reply. Your original question can not be answered apart from a yes or no unless further information from the questioner is forthcoming. I would ask them for more information so I could understand what they need to know and so I don't give an unnecessarily technical answer. If they came back, as a good number here do, with I am not going to elaborate and you must answer" then I would walk away but might just say as I went they tend to be black and sort of box shaped.

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7 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

 

You seem to be saying that newbies, (who have often have little knowledge of boats and boating and, by definition, no knowledge whatsoever of how the forum works), should modify their ways..... but the grumpfuttocks are excused because "everyone communicates differently".

 

 

 

I don't think he is saying that, it's just the way you decided to interpret it ;)

 

Fact is that most newbies settle in to the forum fairly easily, and a few take offence at being asked to use the search function, though usually they get a quick response and a brief answer. In fact the search function is brilliant, as it brings up lots of discussions.

Edited by LadyG
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6 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

 

You seem to be saying that newbies, (who have often have little knowledge of boats and boating and, by definition, no knowledge whatsoever of how the forum works), should modify their ways..... but the grumpfuttocks are excused because "everyone communicates differently".

 

 

That appears to be a statement.

 

 I'm not saying anyone should be excused, merely that people are unlikely to change. I am, as always, happy to be proven wrong. 

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40 minutes ago, booke23 said:

Most of this vitriol seems to stem from pointless arguing on the political section....the purpose of which on an inland waterways forum eludes me.....

We didn't used to have a politics section and political (and religion) discussion was scattered throghout the forum. Some wanted these topics banned, others argued their right to discuss any subject. After much discussion, and not a few departures of long standing forum members, the current compromise of having a separate politics section was implemented. It is not ideal, but it does give the mods a basis for enforcing the 'no politics' rule on the rest of the forum, and is largely observed by all concerned.

45 minutes ago, booke23 said:

Even in the couple of years I've been on this forum the decline is quite noticeable....

It goes in phases. People have made this observation several times before. 

A few years back a period of particularly bad forum behaviour, together with some questionable and occasionally bizarre decisions by the moderators of the time, led to a mass resignation and the establishment of the separate Thunderboat forum by a disgruntled former member here.  After a shaky start that forum seems to have established itself and now has its own members and some who post both there and here.

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4 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

I see, it looks to me as if you are deliberately misunderstanding my reply. Your original question can not be answered apart from a yes or no unless further information from the questioner is forthcoming. I would ask them for more information so I could understand what they need to know and so I don't give an unnecessarily technical answer. If they came back, as a good number here do, with I am not going to elaborate and you must answer" then I would walk away but might just say as I went they tend to be black and sort of box shaped.

I’m not deliberately misunderstanding your reply, merely exploring it. Thanks for your clarification. I appreciate it. 

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4 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Your original question can not be answered apart from a yes or no unless further information from the questioner is forthcoming.

But if you replied with a simple one-word Yes or No, with no explanation, you would be criticised for giving an unhelpful reply!

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16 minutes ago, LadyG said:

Oh,  I thought that some people have blogs, or vlogs for that, I'm not sure there is much to be written about boating, certainly looking at recent new YouTubers they are rather off-putting! Not of the quality of Cruising the Cut or Minimal List.

 

I like Cruising the Cut having had both our boats in his videos recently 🙂 . 

Sorry, I have gone off topic!

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It should also be borne in mind that there are far more online sources of help than when I joined the forum and many youngsters seem to naturally gravitate to these other resources, possible especially if they are using their phones. That removes a whole raft of new users who may simply not know of the forum's existence. It is just like canal Newsgroups like Blacksheep have ceased to exist, I am sure in time forums will go the same way.

 

It seems some of us are being put on the naughty step by the self-appointed forum police for not getting every reply to every question constructed to their tastes. If that is the case then hard luck, keep on and you might just drive  a lot of experience away from the forum.

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20 minutes ago, Balloon said:

@Tony Brooks

 

i ask again, if I came into the pub and said; I have no clue about my battery can you help me, would you say to me “yes I can tell” 

Keeping my pub analogy. You know the kind of pub where you walk in and the door creaks, and everyone looks round at you with a wholly unwelcoming glare. 
 

is that the pub people on here want to be? 

Is that the kind of pub you think this is? 

 

If it is, what made you stay here, or are you undecided? 

 

Both genuine questions, no offence intended. 

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4 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

That appears to be a statement.

 

 I'm not saying anyone should be excused, merely that people are unlikely to change. I am, as always, happy to be proven wrong. 

 

I used the word "seem", to provide some room for doubt, (or whatever :) )

 

I think I have also said that people are unlikely to change, a few posts back, so we probably agree on what you actually meant :)

 

However, in your previous post you "seemed" to be saying that the newbies should change their approach, yet in the above post you are saying that people here are unlikely to change.

 

The bottom line is that newbies are generally ignorant of boats and boating, as well as the forum, and there is a way of responding to this in such a way as to not alienate said newbie.

 

Clearly, if a nice response is made, (asking for more info, or whatever), and the newbie sees their arse, they probably deserve everything they get..... although, what may look like a newbie "seeing their arse", is not always such :)

 

 

 

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7 minutes ago, haggis said:

I like Cruising the Cut having had both our boats in his videos recently 🙂 . 

Sorry, I have gone off topic!

Yes, I've followed him since the beginning, and somehow even his latest vlog was watched from beginning to end, a new word in my vocabulary is 'merch', then an insight in to redbubble and so on, that was twenty minutes on a topic of absolutely no interest!

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9 minutes ago, David Mack said:

But if you replied with a simple one-word Yes or No, with no explanation, you would be criticised for giving an unhelpful reply!

 

In reality, I think Tony would answer, "yes, I'll do my best", and follow this with some questions in order to establish what the situation and problem might be.

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10 minutes ago, David Mack said:

It goes in phases. People have made this observation several times before. 

 

I hope you're right. However with the unprecedented boom in the narrowboat market in recent years you'd expect the opposite to be the case.   

 

2 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

It should also be borne in mind that there are far more online sources of help than when I joined the forum and many youngsters seem to naturally gravitate to these other resources, possible especially if they are using their phones. That removes a whole raft of new users who may simply not know of the forum's existence. It is just like canal Newsgroups like Blacksheep have ceased to exist, I am sure in time forums will go the same way.

 

It seems some of us are being put on the naughty step by the self-appointed forum police for not getting every reply to every question constructed to their tastes. If that is the case then hard luck, keep on and you might just drive  a lot of experience away from the forum.

 

I don't think anyone is being put on the naughty step.....I'd say it's more a cultural issue on the forum.

 

You're right about competing online sources, but many of them (especially facebook) offer a much lower standard of expertise compared to this forum. I feel this should be preserved by making the forum as successful as possible.

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6 minutes ago, David Mack said:

But if you replied with a simple one-word Yes or No, with no explanation, you would be criticised for giving an unhelpful reply!

 

That is the whole point, overly simple questions, either through insufficient knowledge or deliberately can not be answered in any meaningful way without getting more information out of the questioner. When that info is not forthcoming it seems that we are now not allowed to get a bit miffed and show it. In respect of getting a bit miffed have a look at the topic in the BMC section that got take off track by  Lister owner. I think they were running their question in two other people's threads and seemed to keep asking questions that is had answered a few posts previously rather than asking for clarification. I get miffed if it seems my time and knowledge is being abused.

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What winds me up with Newbie questions is that there is that many of them coming on here asking the same questions, often similar questions that have just been asked a day before. If they could be bothered to use the search engine they would find the answer in most cases.

  Most seam like young people, so easier to type a question then search through previous Posts.
 Have they become a society of watching YouTube Vlogs and lost the ability to work things out for themselves and get hands on? often seams that way with the daft questions Newbies ask and I imagine most are under 30 years of age, most seam to be the so called Snowflake generation, as I often wonder how they survive in the real world with what they ask.

 
  

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5 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

I hope you're right. However with the unprecedented boom in the narrowboat market in recent years you'd expect the opposite to be the case.   

 

 

I don't think anyone is being put on the naughty step.....I'd say it's more a cultural issue on the forum.

 

You're right about competing online sources, but many of them (especially facebook) offer a much lower standard of expertise compared to this forum. I feel this should be preserved by making the forum as successful as possible.

 

Yes, a cultural issue. I certainly expect a degree of civility from posters and do not expect them to make it clear they are entitled to the answer they want, and I have to give it to them. I also expect a reasonable standard of communication and not text speak words. It is, I am sure, and age thing relating to the standards expected and given. Others are probably younger and more tolerant, but that is the way it is.

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20 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Is that the kind of pub you think this is? 

 

If it is, what made you stay here, or are you undecided? 

 

Both genuine questions, no offence intended. 

I think it can be that kind of pub. I stay for the quality of advice and because I like some of the posters, and because I have a thick enough skin to tolerate it. I am very conscious that others may not be. 

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5 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

Yes, a cultural issue. I certainly expect a degree of civility from posters and do not expect them to make it clear they are entitled to the answer they want, and I have to give it to them. I also expect a reasonable standard of communication and not text speak words. It is, I am sure, and age thing relating to the standards expected and given. Others are probably younger and more tolerant, but that is the way it is.

Maybe an age thing but I am probably younger than many. Maybe a discrimination thing?? I’m certainly not a snowflake. But I won’t stand for unkindness 

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15 minutes ago, Balloon said:

I think it can be that kind of pub. I stay for the quality of advice and because I like some of the posters, and because I have a thick enough skin to tolerate it. I am very conscious that others may not be. 

What people have to remember it’s a Forum, in real life most of us are totally different. The ones I have met on here I’ve had a laugh with about this place, then we go back on here and give each other grief. The actual boaters on here know the score and know they would help each other no matter what. Most of the time it’s the boat less people on here that are argumentative and who squabble over nothing. Often because they think they’re right all the time, but if your on the canal waiting for the chip shop to open, you couldn’t really care less👍😂

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