Wow, really sorry for kind of starting this and then vanishing while it got all crazy. I wasn't really equipped to wade into a big internet argument yesterday.
Anyway, because I see that quite a few people referenced Eevee's post, but not many actually addressed it, I guess I'll get to that.
The problem that arises is that most people do not care. Many people don't even recognize the voice of experience, let alone consider listening to it. So post after well-thought-out post falls on deaf ears, and a lot of time is wasted. Why bother, then? I gain more respect and attention by just yelling at people. Maybe they don't listen to me, but negative attention is still better than being dismissed as irrelevant. It's not just here, either; I've come to regret taking the time to write very good replies all over the blogotubes.
Remember that people who are just beginning to post on this board do not know you. They don't recognize you as the voice of experience because it's not like you go around wearing a nametag that says, "Hi there, I know what I'm doing." Even if you did, how many would automatically believe it?
People are intimidated by people who know what they're doing, especially if they're already in an unfamiliar environment. If they're unfamiliar with the internet and the forum, they're more comfortable with people who post like they do and appear to be a member of their peer group and therefore more inclined to listen to such posters. However, that doesn't mean that you're wasting your time by trying to set them straight. It may simply be that you can't go this alone. If several people post in a reasonable manner and show the OP and the other bad posters that they are incorrect, then the OP either starts to catch on or proves him or herself stupid. In the latter case, I would say that you're welcome to give up on them. At the same time, I don't think that means you have every right to lambast them, because if they're immune to reason, they're probably immune to satire.
Ultimately, if you approach someone who doesn't know you and start heaping things like, 'Your web site sucks, my eyes bleed, learn HTML, etc." on them, why shouldn't they just regard you as another random flamer? How are they supposed to know you know what you're talking about, especially if you don't bother to expand upon what you're saying. It may be self-evident to you that lime green on an electric blue background does not an effective color scheme make, but for someone who's just learning to code things like "aesthetic appeal" are probably lost against a background of, "Ooh, look at all the cool colors I can make!" People who don't have a clue may think they're all that, yeah, but how do they know that you
are?
But there's no inclination to do otherwise. Nobody would listen to me besides the half-dozen or so who already trust that I don't say things I'm not sure about. I'm good enough at skirting being banned, and if I were, oh well; fewer things to get annoyed about.
From my experience, I'm inclined to think otherwise. It's true that some people do respond well to negative criticism--though usually they do so simply by emulating the person who criticized them and not actually realizing
what they were being criticized for. On the other hand, there are people who couldn't take criticism if you coated it eight layers deep in sugar. They are not yet ready to function as a productive member of internet society. However, I feel that infracting and banning them if necessary because they just don't get it is just as effective as chewing them out in public--and if you're going to be infracting them anyway, what does a little more humiliation do besides make you look like a jerk?
I've been writing fanfiction for about five years, and every couple of months somewhere there flares up a load of dramadrama about the difference between a flame and concrit. Someone reviews people to get revenge, goes on about how incompetent they are, and how they should break their keyboard and never write again, and how their characters are all Mary-Sues, and so on. And usually the reviewer is dead right in the technical aspects of the review. However, all I've ever seen this generate is a lot of whining, hurt authors who annoy the other authors and reviewers, plus a bunch of parrot reviewers who think, "Hey, it looks like that review really got attention! I'm going to go and do that to other people now!" And then the trend expands and you have a
lot of whining authors and general annoyance. But you can concrit something to within an inch of its life, point out all the errors you want in as blunt a fashion as you want. But as long as you keep your analysis objective, your tone no more harsh than simply cold, people learn. Sometimes they don't, and sometimes they go whining off and annoy people. But some people do learn, and if some parrot reviewer decides that the best way to get a reaction is to construct well-reasoned and neutral arguments, then doesn't the whole community benefit?
Above all, though, there is zero social reason to try to help new members because the population as a whole does not think new members need helping. The owner isn't around so much any more, either, to give any sort of cultural guidance. There are more clueless pre-teens than not and they all encourage each other in some terrible prepubescent circlejerk. They don't want to make quality threads; they just want to be entertained and don't understand why old memes are a bad thing. They don't want to learn to use real tools; they want to pat each other on the back for their mediocre cookie-cutter results and don't understand why they should strive to do far better. They don't want a deep and interesting debate; they want any answer for the unexplained, just to soothe the mental itch, and don't understand why that shouldn't be good enough. Hell, a lot of the forums themselves don't lend themselves to many threads besides surveys.
And there's not really any group inclination to push them.
It's true that a lot of people don't fully understand what forums are meant to be about. They're new to the internet and posting on forums; I would bet that a fair portion of the members here, and certainly the demographic that get ragged on most about this, have been posting for less than a year. If not, they probably have never been on a board where a significant portion of the established members are well above their age group. So of course they're all, "Post pictures of your pets omg! What did you have for breakfast today?" Their idea of forums is to speak up and be heard, not to hear other people. I do agree with you here, but I don't agree that what you're doing is the best way to stop it?
And if there's no group inclination to push them to go deeper than that, then why not start doing so?
In any case, I don't think that the circlejerking is going on solely among the newer members. Many of the senior members seem far more interested in mocking the stupid than in actually trying to fix it, which doesn't do anything to improve forum conditions. They'd rather revel in their own wit and reputation, often making stupid-looking posts themselves, instead of doing anything about it. But seriously, how smart do you have to be to make fun of someone who so clearly has no clue what they're doing? That's not wit. It's just being a bully. If you want to raise the level of discourse on the boards, why do you act so juvenile about the problem? The way some members act, I think they would honestly
prefer that the stupid stay stupid so that they have some easy mock material. Which, besides being sickening, only makes them look worse when they go on to complain about the stupidity they themselves enjoy mocking. I wouldn't consider you to be one such person, but how much different is it to say, "Sure, I could lead by example, but it's so much easier just to sink to their level, or to the level of insults?"
To clear up a couple of other major things that I see as having arisen: first, Altmer said something about not caring whether Insanity is clogged with tripe and forum games was a load of crap and so forth so long as the discussion boards are actually about discussion. I agree with this wholeheartedly. To the people who are saying "Don't stomp on our fun!": keep your fun where it belongs, please. I don't care if you want to 4chan away in Insanity, but that doesn't mean that typing incoherently in the debating hall and then getting called on it is a violation of your funtiems. If you do not want to make serious posts and engage issues about which you need to do your homework lest you look moronic, do not post in the Debate forum. Likewise, I will not post serious things and muck up your Insanity board. Now, if someone
does act stupid in Debate, I still don't think that they deserve to be publicly shredded for it. However, if people disagree with you, and vehemently, and if you get infracted for totally disregarding the rules of good debate, you have no right to complain.
This leads me to the fact that some people think that boards like Insanity are extraneous at best and a major blemish at the worst. Here I'm going to have to say the same thing as I did about the debating hall: can't stand the way people post there? Leave it alone. If it's not against the rules, you've got no right to go in there and try to reform them. The fact is that even highly intelligent people can enjoy stupid humor, or lolcat memes, or whatever other nonsense goes on in there. We don't have to be totally serious all the time. Just so long as we're serious when it counts.
Additionally, some people seem to think I'm advocating a policy along the lines of, "Be benevolent unto the newbie, for he/she is our precious little poster of the future." This is not true. Sometimes, you just need to smack some sense into somebody. I believe opal posted something along the lines of we should give people a chance, but if they don't actually improve their posting habits should then proceed to infract and ban them as necessary. There
are idiot newbies out there, but that doesn't mean that all newbies are. And even if they are idiots, they don't deserve getting treated as subhuman for it; you can punish them without being cruel.
However, people are equating stupidity with ignorance. They are completely different, and I am not in any way "advocating stupidity." I think that it is one of humanity's most major problems. Many newbies are extremely ignorant--ignorant of the way that the internet and the world works, how to express themselves clearly, and how they should behave. If they have never seriously posted on an internet forum before, they may not realize that chatspeak is a bad idea. If they have never encountered many people outside their peer group in their hometown, they probably find the idea that other people have differing opinions, may know more than them, or otherwise are very different from them strange and even frightening. They may respond poorly. That doesn't mean they're
stupid. They're young and ignorant. Stupidity is having something clearly pointed out to you and then actively refusing to believe it. For example, firmly believing that the sky is green even when it is shown conclusively to be blue. Stupidity should be punished, though you don't need to be nasty about it. Ignorant is something that everyone here once was.
I don't think we should insult people who mess up on the forums for the same reason that I wouldn't stand up and yell, "ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED?!" at someone who said something stupid in one of my classes. We all mess up sometimes, and usually we can be made to see what we were doing wrong. The people for whom that doesn't work aren't worth the effort of actually standing up.
And as for who I would consider to be a part of the "Dick Clique" or whatever, I don't really see any need to name names. You know who you are, honestly, although if you
really need it spelled out, if you've called a member or group of members retarded, a douchebag(s), stupid, or something similarly derogatory, directly or indirectly as in opening a post with a line such as, "Are you fucking retarded?", I would consider you a problem. The more frequently you do this, the bigger a problem I would consider you to be. I have enough respect for the people doing this that I don't see any reason why I should call them out specifically; if you don't agree with what I'm saying, or for some reason refuse to identify yourself as falling into that group even if you do, then ultimately you're not going to change. I don't think that people would be more inclined to change their behavior if I listed names, so why would I?
To an extent I'm less unhappy about newbies getting speared than I am that so many of the more intelligent people of this board are going the
Greater Internet Fuckwad way.
I'm not inclined to go back and reread everything again to make this even longer, but feel free to yell at me if you think I missed something important. I feel like I forgot something important as it is.
