steenoe said:
You figured that I counted you in for camp 1. And correctly so. This is not supposed to turn into any kind of personal issue at all, at least that was not the intention! I think we are better off, stopping this discussion as soon as possible. I just feel like adding one more comment; This forum is open to everyone, that fact includes people that doesnt know what a resistor is! The questions will come, no matter how obvious the answer is. There are too many members here, putting down people asking a simple question. Basically what I mean is, you cant answer a newb with: "Did you read the datasheet"
I see that happen a lot. The poor chap doesnt even know the excistance of such a thing as a Datasheet. I could easily name you a few members that needs a kick in the #### on that account! But I wont. What that kind of members want to demonstrate, I am not sure! Maybe they just want to tell us how much they know? At least I find that less than useful, in any sense I can think of.
I do agree that a lot of members need a kick , to get started though...
Granted there are a lot of posts to look through, but if someone were to look back through the ones I've made, they'd find that I've answered the "What is a resistor?" question at least as often--and probably more often than most any other member. There was a time when I was putting in as much as ten to twelve hours a day on this board in an attempt to make people feel welcome so as to reach critical mass, meaning a self-sustaining number of members. When I started here, there were only a hundred members, maybe two hundred, and a thread would remain on the front page sometimes for days. Now it's twenty minutes or less.
The problem I run into now is lack of time. I can't answer every single question that pops up during the course of an average day. With the amount of time I do have available, I try to start with the harder or more interesting questions because there are fewer people who can/will respond to that sort of thing. It's not that I won't answer the newbie questions, it's that I can't currently spend ten hours a day online. If the day has been relatively slow, I think you'll find that I do still sometimes answer the "What is a resistor?" posts.
Members who have been here a couple of years and who know the basics and who have also gained some experience by building a project or two do need to be prodded out of their comfort zone. Master a new skill or two. Learn a bit more.
Besides, what do you want me to tell people? That it's hard? No way! That attitude loses members, fast. We've had members (who shall remain nameless) who took the approach that it was all very difficult and far beyond the abilities of the average man on the street. They would chat amongst themselves in self-congratulatory tones about how much they knew because they were EEs and had been educated in the arcana...blah, blah, blah. In the fullness of time, they started their own board. And you know what? It's dead. Lifeless. I predict that it will remain so for as long as they maintain that attitude.
The matter of who answers the newbie questions is something I struggled with for a long time. I tried a number of models for the place, sometimes posting them publicly back when I was the moderator to see how people felt about them. At this point, it's a hodge-podge of different things, perhaps best described as "Each one teach one." That's a model I can live with. I, personally, add the concept of "Pay forward" to that, but others may or may not see it that way.
Before criticizing me--either directly or by implication--for not answering enough newbie questions, you'd do well to look back at all the questions I have answered...and to send me another twelve hours a day.
ZUM911 said:
If it's me you're afraid of...don't be.
I grumble a fair amount, but a lot of that is because I'm either tired (I generally only get four to six hours of sleep a night--it's not just the kids, I've always been that way) or I've got a headache. I get migraines. Supposedly they happen less often as you get older. Ha! The non-conformist strikes again! I'm having them more often. No one seems to be able to explain why. Ask anyone you know who has migraines how well they function on any level when they're hurting and you'll get answers that range from "not well" to "I don't...period."
One of the things that gets lost in translation (and this applies to what I think Steen is trying to get at, as well) is tone of voice and facial expression, that sort of thing. That gave rise to the emoticon (those little smiley face things) as people attempted to put a spin on what they were saying. I don't use emoticons for two reasons: The first being that I'm an author and I try to express myself using words only, the second being that I find emoticons to be just as ambiguous (if not more so) than words. No, really...what does the little worm popping out of the hole mean? What does that tell you about the preceding comment? Ask any ten people and you'll get twelve answers. Gimme words. Only, I don't have time to write little stories and stuff to give context to my posts the way I used to. People never accused me of being nasty back then. Now I write shorter posts and the flavor gets lost and people don't 'get' the irony or indignation or nudge-nudge or whatever I was trying to convey. Bummer.
And, yes, in case you were wondering, I have a headache today, but it's not that bad in the overall scheme of things so I grumble and go on with life. Take that into account before taking offense at anything I've written.
AND BUILD THE CIRCUIT, DAMMIT! WHADDAYA MEAN YOU CAN'T DO CIRCUIT BOARDS? GET UP OFF YOUR BEHUMPUS AND GIVE IT A TRY!
(There! I did what everybody expected me to do and hollered and got it out of their systems...not at all the same thing as saying that I'm a meanie-head. [That's a term the older kids came up with to call me/my wife when we told them to clean their plates at supper.])
Actually, it is pretty easy. Anyone who says differently is either disappointed because they had a project go sour on them or they're trying to build themselves up at your expense. The first sort just need a little help. The second sort should be shot at sunrise...or at least evicted from DIY.
Grey
Incidentally, resistors are those little things that come in two flavors:
--The kind with colored stripes where the brown and the red, and the gray and the white look so similar that you can't tell them apart.
--Or the kind with writing so small that you can't read it without a microscope.
Either way, you're screwed.
Me? I just grab a handful and start sticking them in until I find something that works.
Grey
P.S.: Ooops...I forgot the kind where the bloody stripe is the same color as the body of the resistor, thereby rendering it invisible.
Grumble.
--The kind with colored stripes where the brown and the red, and the gray and the white look so similar that you can't tell them apart.
--Or the kind with writing so small that you can't read it without a microscope.
Either way, you're screwed.
Me? I just grab a handful and start sticking them in until I find something that works.
Grey
P.S.: Ooops...I forgot the kind where the bloody stripe is the same color as the body of the resistor, thereby rendering it invisible.
Grumble.
......or would you rather listen to me whistling Dixie?