please be reminded of:
1. this board is on a voluntary basis, no one gets paid for posting, no one is being forced to post anything other than what one is willing to...
2. there are no forum rules against stupid....ignore is good...
3. spammers are dealt with a "one touch ban and clean" and you do not know this.
4. if you violate forum rules, we straighten you out....
5. you of course are entitled to your opinions, your anecdotes, your experiences, but please do not force other people to believe you...again this is a voluntary process..
6. if you are here to make money, there is a special place for that and you have to pay...
7. if you are here to "influence people and make a lot of friends" then good luck to you...
finally, if you are here to share and help others, then you are most welcome...
1. this board is on a voluntary basis, no one gets paid for posting, no one is being forced to post anything other than what one is willing to...
2. there are no forum rules against stupid....ignore is good...
3. spammers are dealt with a "one touch ban and clean" and you do not know this.
4. if you violate forum rules, we straighten you out....
5. you of course are entitled to your opinions, your anecdotes, your experiences, but please do not force other people to believe you...again this is a voluntary process..
6. if you are here to make money, there is a special place for that and you have to pay...
7. if you are here to "influence people and make a lot of friends" then good luck to you...
finally, if you are here to share and help others, then you are most welcome...
😀 True enough. But it happens all the time here. Usually telling people their ideas or gear just isn't good enough, not worth wasting time on.
Not that I should be preaching to the publisher of Linear Audio.
Thanks. Sorry I came on like that. Bad day.
BTW, I think it is OK to tell people that their ideas are bad. Just don't tell people that they are worthless.
Jan
I am not entirely sure of the trust of this. My post that you commented on was to say that there should be no 'quality' police here, anybody can post whatever they want as long it is in line with the rules. One man's junk thread is another man's enlightenment. Do you believe this is ridiculous??
I always have said, it's ok to thrash ideas - with arguments of course - but not people. I have no idea what the ref to LDRs and transparency and effect boxes means here.
Jan
I understand 🙂
Jan
I think this point needs driving home. The moderation of the forum is with respect to the rules. The members of the forum steer the direction of the conversations. When people treat each other with respect there is no need for moderation intervention. Equally if people initially assume that the other person respects their pov as opposed to being disrespectful then a lot of arguments would be avoided.
The number of times we see people who think that they are being attacked, when someone is simply trying to help is a bit alarming. Not saying there isn't bad behavior, there is, but it is rarer that what some people think.
I think now is an excellent time for people to re-read (or read for the first time) Jan's excellent blog post. Don't be such a scientist! - diyAudio
Tony
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Thanks Tony, that's an excellent post that I'd not seen before.
See, even this thread can have some good come from it 😉
A problem which occurs with some new people on here is that they cannot distinguish between these two quite different concepts. Maybe nobody has ever disagreed wth them in real life? I have been accused more than once of calling someone "stupid" when all I did was say that they are wrong. Others have complained of being "attacked" under the same circumstances. Curiously, some of these have then gone on to make veiled threats against me - although quite how they intended to carry these out is unclear. I can only assume that some of them grew up in circumstances where if you don't like someone then you punch them rather than argue with them.jan.didden said:
Some of these folk get fed up with us and disappear. Some get banned by the Mods. Some gradually learn to listen and learn and stay - eventually they are able to contribute to the forum.
I would not quite put it like that. Some views are so wrong that they are not worthy of respect. However, all people are worthy of respect. Getting the balance right is not easy, especially when someone is aggressively pushing nonsense (sometimes for unstated commercial reasons).wintermute said:
Yes I was having trouble with how to word that (but it aligns with what you said in your first sentence to Jan). I think all too often people interpret a challenge as a lack of respect. Sometimes beliefs are so entrenched that nothing will change them. I think this is where we need to recognize that and accept we have done what we can, and walk away.
It is when this doesn't happen (and it takes two to tango) that often leads to situations where moderators have to step in.
Tony.
It is when this doesn't happen (and it takes two to tango) that often leads to situations where moderators have to step in.
Tony.
I very well remember the time when I first entered here. I had been 'doing audio' in splendid isolation and was convinced that I would be welcomed to explain to the masses what they had been missing all those years, and what I had found out for them.
Funny enough, it didn't work out quite that way. 😎
And I was deeply hurt by the lack of kudos and generally those stupid people who thought they knew better than me!
Interestingly, they often WERE right and I was wrong! Took me quite some time to come to terms with that alien concept.
Just like the real world I guess.
Nowadays, as a means of self-protection I use the ignore list liberally.
Jan
Funny enough, it didn't work out quite that way. 😎
And I was deeply hurt by the lack of kudos and generally those stupid people who thought they knew better than me!
Interestingly, they often WERE right and I was wrong! Took me quite some time to come to terms with that alien concept.
Just like the real world I guess.
Nowadays, as a means of self-protection I use the ignore list liberally.
Jan
I have a small ignore list. To get on it you generally have to be downright rude and insulting to me personally, usually combined with talking nonsense. One or two are on it because they take deep exception to being corrected technically, so I just want to avoid bumping into them and annoying them by accident.
A few folk have been promoted off my ignore list. In one case someone settled in here and started talking mostly sense, and I could not remember why he was on the list.
A few folk have been promoted off my ignore list. In one case someone settled in here and started talking mostly sense, and I could not remember why he was on the list.
Diyaudio is a fantastic forum. a lot's of interesting topics from a lot of interesting members. I personally learned (again) a Lot since 2004, when I joined. I don't care about standards declining on some threads, I have the freedom not to read them, and the same with people who often talk nonsense. The threads might occupying space, but we have a bundle of space on the Internet, space for everything, like this thread.
Very seldom to see someone post a "self-biography" this way 🙂
BiiiG "thumbs up" for this post
One of my early experiences nearly sent me away. A question had been asked about where to tie G3 in an EL34 when triode strapping the tube. I took the time to rig up a manual curve tracer using power supplies and digital volt meters. I gathered the necessary data for the G3 connected to cathode connection, and for the G3 connected to plate connection, and plotted the results in Excel. I still use this method today to deal with situations that go beyond the reach of a Vacutrace, which I didn't have at the time.
I presented my results showing a small but obvious "tetrode kink" in the G3 to plate graph and was immediately told that it was all rubbish because I didn't use a Sophia (an expensive European curve tracer for tubes).
The accuser was a respected guru here at the time, and most of the other posts were based on "sound quality" so I apologized and didn't offer any real measured data for some time.
The PowerDrive method of driving a tube with a mosfet met with strong resistance from the "all silicon is evil" crowd, but I expected that, and even made a joke about being called "Transistorlab." Now 10 years later it is accepted by all but the most "sandophobic."
Whenever there are two or more knowledgeable people are working on something, there will be disagreement. Try getting 30 engineers in a room and discussing a new cell phone design......that's why I left the cell phone design group!
I had been doing DIY audio since I was a pre-teen kid. I blew up far more stuff than made sound, but I kept at it. I got a job in the local Motorola plant at age 20, and became a product design engineer at age 32 with no formal education. I got my first engineering degree at age 40, and the second at age 48. Both degrees were earned by taking classes while working full time at Motorola as an engineer. This gave me a little different perspective than the typical engineer.
Many of the professors at the colleges I attended were part time teachers with full time jobs in industry. My favorite math teacher was a full time programmer, and actually asked the class for real engineering issues that he could incorporate into his teaching. We spent a week discussing and analyzing the math behind quarter mile drag racing....cool stuff, but never ask a math prof if a jet plane sucks or blows itself across the sky unless you really want 3 blackboards full of differential equations!
Other teachers, especially PHD's teaching in their chosen field to people who had to take the class, but could care less about the subject, really couldn't reach the class, and nobody, including myself learned anything.
One of the jobs I did for most of my engineering career was to mentor the "freshouts," those fresh out of school who have never used modern test equipment, or even soldered on a PC board.
We need to understand how to reach most of them, often by simplifying the hard stuff, and offering them other paths with explanations when we see them going wrong. It is their project, and people (like me at a young age) sometimes learn best by looking through the cloud of smoke from a failure! We need to offer strong words of discouragement only when something potentially dangerous or really expensive may happen.
Engineering school is a good "stupid filter" but occasionally "stupid" people do get through, especially in some schools. They often "don't know what they don't know" and refuse to accept help......they don't last long in real world engineering. It is also very dangerous when high voltages are involved. This forum has no such filter, we must be careful in what we teach.
All too often a thread involving hot chassis electronics is abruptly closed BEFORE someone has a chance to explain why this is STUPID. Often the OP goes away without understanding what's wrong.....I had to learn this the hard way as a kid, but fortunately I lived through several serious shocks to understand and learn what I didn't know!
I have no ignore list, and the Tubelab sub forum requires little if any moderator involvement....coincidence?
Yes indeed! That's is one of my great learning moments - not just here but across the entire internet. Just how often, and how much, people very knowledgeable and deep inside an industry can disagree. The internet has really brought into focus how much "no one agrees with anything!" Hyperbole of course, but it so often seems that way.
Another surprise is how men so technically knowledgeable in some areas - like audio - can be so clueless in other common technical areas - like computers. Mind boggling. And don't even get me started on photos.The number of really smart and knowledgeable people here who can't figure out how to properly post photos is distressing.
I find it mind boggling that you find it mind boggling. Must be an age thing. What has audio technology got to do with computer technology and what do you mean by technology in this instance?
These days quite a bit. A large chunk of my audio gear all sit on the network.
These days, yes. When most people are talking about computer technology I doubt they are thinking or caring or knowing what the electrons are up to.
True but it is an approach that will only take you so far. If you are in the business of making sausages you cannot avoid the messy stuff.
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