Aninhumer
Guy with scary face.
As I'm sure most people are aware, there have been a lot of newb posts recently, and I'm sure there will be waves like this in the future.
In my opinion, these posts tend to cause a lot more chaos than they perhaps should.
By making this topic, I'm hoping there can be a constructive discussion about how we can best deal with these newbs to reduce their impact on the forums.
Now, my actual point, there are two things that I've seen happening in these topics:
If the answer to the question is well known, people are obviously annoyed and tell them to search and read the stickies, as they should.
However, the manner in which this is done can often be very aggressive, and the actual answer is never posted, and I'm not sure this is actually beneficial.
The post then often derails into a discussion about n00bs, which means all that person sees is a direct attack, followed by a generalised one.
I personally think the best way of dealing with these topics, is to post a link to the relevant FAQ section, or previous topic, followed by a polite comment to indicate that this was information they could easily have found if they had looked. Then, most importantly, people should ignore the topic completely.
This way, the newb gets a quick answer to their question, learns the error of their ways (as most of them are just ignorant not stupid) and the topic drops off the page.
In the second case, if the answer to the question is not well known, or is open for debate, the thread turns into a technical argument.
This isn't necessarily bad, but is often highly confusing for a newb who was asking what they thought was a simple question.
Often these questions are asking if something is possible, where the short answer is "No", and instead that answer seems to be "Maybe". (Case in point: the WINE sticky)
To be fair, plenty of people do see this and post the simple answer, but I think it's perhaps something talented devs should be aware of when they're talking very tentative "Maybes".
What do other people think?
In my opinion, these posts tend to cause a lot more chaos than they perhaps should.
By making this topic, I'm hoping there can be a constructive discussion about how we can best deal with these newbs to reduce their impact on the forums.
Now, my actual point, there are two things that I've seen happening in these topics:
If the answer to the question is well known, people are obviously annoyed and tell them to search and read the stickies, as they should.
However, the manner in which this is done can often be very aggressive, and the actual answer is never posted, and I'm not sure this is actually beneficial.
The post then often derails into a discussion about n00bs, which means all that person sees is a direct attack, followed by a generalised one.
I personally think the best way of dealing with these topics, is to post a link to the relevant FAQ section, or previous topic, followed by a polite comment to indicate that this was information they could easily have found if they had looked. Then, most importantly, people should ignore the topic completely.
This way, the newb gets a quick answer to their question, learns the error of their ways (as most of them are just ignorant not stupid) and the topic drops off the page.
In the second case, if the answer to the question is not well known, or is open for debate, the thread turns into a technical argument.
This isn't necessarily bad, but is often highly confusing for a newb who was asking what they thought was a simple question.
Often these questions are asking if something is possible, where the short answer is "No", and instead that answer seems to be "Maybe". (Case in point: the WINE sticky)
To be fair, plenty of people do see this and post the simple answer, but I think it's perhaps something talented devs should be aware of when they're talking very tentative "Maybes".
What do other people think?
