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What's up guys
Pheezer
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Okay, so let's have a chat about H/A.
I like H/A. I'm kind of really proud of the fact that it really has helped a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to ask some of the questions that get asked in here. I think it's actually helped a lot of forumers out in really legitimate ways, whether you figured out how to get into shape or fix your computer or you realized that hey, just asking girls if they want to go get some coffee actually works sometimes.
I don't think that H/A is perfect though, and we don't often have public venues made available for criticism. We try to respond to PMs, but sometimes that's difficult if we don't get to log in for a few days, or if you're really pissed off at us and you're not making your point so clearly (hint: it's hard to see your side of things sometimes).
So let's have us a talk. No one's going to get carded in this thread unless you're taking advantage of this opportunity to try to get some pointless barbs in. If you'd like to express discontent with a specific instance, it'd probably be best if you still did that via PM, but if you're willing to help us keep things calm, I can promise we'll at least give you our reasons for whatever happened. I can't guarantee that we're going to reverse anything or that you'll see sweeping change in H/A because that's kind of not the point.
The idea is that we can get a better understanding of what you guys want in H/A that you're not getting, to hear out any really good ideas you'd like to see us give a shot, and generally just to clear the air.
I like H/A. I'm kind of really proud of the fact that it really has helped a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to ask some of the questions that get asked in here. I think it's actually helped a lot of forumers out in really legitimate ways, whether you figured out how to get into shape or fix your computer or you realized that hey, just asking girls if they want to go get some coffee actually works sometimes.
I don't think that H/A is perfect though, and we don't often have public venues made available for criticism. We try to respond to PMs, but sometimes that's difficult if we don't get to log in for a few days, or if you're really pissed off at us and you're not making your point so clearly (hint: it's hard to see your side of things sometimes).
So let's have us a talk. No one's going to get carded in this thread unless you're taking advantage of this opportunity to try to get some pointless barbs in. If you'd like to express discontent with a specific instance, it'd probably be best if you still did that via PM, but if you're willing to help us keep things calm, I can promise we'll at least give you our reasons for whatever happened. I can't guarantee that we're going to reverse anything or that you'll see sweeping change in H/A because that's kind of not the point.
The idea is that we can get a better understanding of what you guys want in H/A that you're not getting, to hear out any really good ideas you'd like to see us give a shot, and generally just to clear the air.
IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Pheezer on
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Admittedly, to try and combat this I've changed my title to Registered Nurse and explain my background whenever I try to answer a question, but it's something that gets under my skin.
While true to an extent, the general consensus of the thread tends to be reasonable. One or two people will take the alarmist route and declare immediate medical action is required, but there are usually enough other folks around who know something (like yourself or that doctor who posts every now and then with a nice disclaimer before his post saying he's not responsible for the advice he gives) to clear up any particularly ridiculous claims before someone ends up in the ER for a cold. And really, with very, very few people educated enough to recognize some of the strange medical conditions people come here asking about it's probably better to err on the side of caution. An extra trip to the doctor is better than slowly dying while chanting, "The internet told me I'm okay..."
I'm really happy with H/A these days. There are rarely any off-topic or unhelpful posts, and I've personally learned a great deal just by reading threads and then doing research/pulling papers trying to help the threadmaker out. My only real complaint would be the number of redundant threads recently, but with search disabled that's bound to happen and is an issue that will hopefully clear up once search comes back.
At the moment, it feels like H/A is only for life related questions, and technical questions are misplaced.
Agreed, it could use subforums for specific topics (if we want to expand on the concept).
An added benefit would be that it'd be easy for someone with a specific specialty/knowledge to find the ones they can help out with most.
Admittedly, I've given medical advice without having any technical credentials in the field... and I apologize if it's done harm. The two situations I can think of was one where someone had a bad ear infection and another where someone had Strep. Though I'm no expert, I know that these can be bad things if left untreated, and I expressed my non-professional but urgent opinion that they should see a doctor.
I felt in both cases that it was important for the person to see a doctor, but indeed I'm not a professional. I imagine most people who give advice on personal relationship here aren't relationship therapists either, however.
But I can see how an unprofessional opinion given would be frustrating to a professional, especially if it differs. We could have an honor system of prefixing advice given without proper credentials with some special tag, like "[Unofficial Advice]" or something like that.
Part of the usefulness is that, though unofficial advice may be exaggerated or off by a bit at times, we can't know for sure that someone who's absolutely qualified to make an assessment will even show up in the forum. So we do the best we can to give the best advice we can in hopes that it will help, or at least start the discussion.
I'd be willing to participate in such a program. I feel it's useful to get (and give) advice, even if it's not professional... but indeed, if someone steps in that has an actual qualifications or professional experience, it'd be useful to know who does and who doesn't so that the OP can choose based on that advice. (on a side note, I do try to prefix statements that I make where I'm not qualified with something along the lines of "this is merely anecdotal" or "I'm no expert at this, but from what I've researched/seen/read about...")
While I could see the benefit to a Relationship subforum, and a Tech subforum, I think we do ok as it is. I worry that if things split up too much, that the H&A section as a whole would suffer.
That's just one example, but there are a lot of threads like that. And I think that if respondents can be punished - and rightly so - for shitting on someone else's thread by offering useless advice, OPs should be punished if their thread was shit to begin with and violated the spirit of the forums.
Also, I think it kind of goes without saying that the people who post here are not lawyers or doctors. Even if they were, if they were stupid enough to post saying "I am a doctor, and my professional medical opinion is that you should ignore that swelling growth and wait for it to go away!", they would just be setting themselves up for verbal and/or legal abuse when the growth turns out to be gangrene or something. It is absolutely impossible to give any sort of reasonable diagnosis over the internet. It is difficult enough, sometimes, to do that in real life. I think personal experiences and "doctor now [or at least next week, or before it gets worse, or whatever]" posts are pretty much the only acceptable responses to medical advice threads.
MegaMan001, I share your pain. Usually, if it's exceptionally egregious ("I have a headache" "it could be a brain tumor!") I'll throw a card, but I haven't seen anything that bad lately.
Besides, I can only think of two instances off the top of my head where the authors obviously didn't want to take any advice presented to them. And one was yonks ago.
XBL: Torn Hoodie
@hoodiethirteen
No. We're not pidgeon-holing H/A into Girl or Computer questions and there's no good reason to segment things that way. Sorry, but your idea is a bad one. If Thanatos sounds like he might be agreeing with you it's because he sucks.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Nope. Never going to happen. Everyone gets to ask. If the rest of us realize they're not interested in help, they get their topic closed and they don't get to make a repeat of the same thread. No other punishments because a lot of the time, people don't realize that they're part of that category and it would be pointless to punish it anyhow because it would only deter thoughtful and considerate people who are very unlikely to fall into that category.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Good point. I hadn't considered that. The threads do get closed with regularity if they aren't going anywhere, and that should be enough. If people consistently post threads that aren't really seeking advice, they don't get responded to.
Also no. It wouldn't accomplish anything because everyone feels that their situation is special anyhow, and besides, I'm willing to be sympathetic on this topic. A lot of those threads come from dudes who have their very first girlfriend or whatever and I don't think they deserve to have what is to them a very big deal lost in the shuffle of a megathread or brushed off as "oh you're another one of those".
Yes the threads very frequently go the exact same way, repeatedly, but you know, I've been here long enough that I'm OK with that. It's not hurting anything and if you don't like those threads, you can ignore them. They're not so frequent that they're pushing other threads off the front page before they're answered, and they aren't prevent other types of threads from being made. So they get to stay.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
It's also quite uncommon. Of all of the worst things that happen here, bad threads happen far less than bad replies. So even if we were looking to "solve" it, there would still be bigger fish to fry. But there's nothing to solve so we're just not gonna worry about it.
Also guys this is a pretty good mix of the sort of thing I wanted to see and the sort of thing I expected to see and you're all being very nice about it. So thanks, let's keep the ball rolling (despite me saying no to everything).
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Though I may not respond in many H/A threads, I try to help out where I can. I'm sure there are many people here that appreciate everything that H/A has to offer, and I don't think anything really needs to change.
But this is one man's opinion (Oh and a girlfriend mega-thread is a bad idea).
Also, if we had a single mega-thread for it, we'd miss those gems like that one a few weeks ago where the girl was OBVIOUSLY hot and bothered for the guy, and we got to cheer him on.
They're few and far between, but it makes me happy to cheer someone on rather than break it to him that it's just not as good as it looks.
All in all, I'd say on balance this is a good resource. Sure, you get dumb advice occasionally, but that's the trade off from being able to poll a massive group of people for counsel. I think anecdotal advice is often just as valid in here as professional advice and it'd be impractical and at odds with the purpose of the forum to have a panel of learned professionals who were the only people allowed to answer questions anyway.
this right here is what I was going to type, only this sounds better.
PS: 3rding the thing about mini-debates
There all ready is. Like, over the entire forum pretty much.
The environment is so positive - if I need help on something, I'm definitely posting here, cos you guys are fab! And you give useful advice.
I love the mini-debates.
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Admittedly, it's a bit addicting. This board and the PAX board are the only ones I check here now... not that the other boards are bad, but this one feels rewarding to contribute to.
I'm definitely also a fan of mini-debates on the subject. Not many things are completely clear-cut and obvious... and sometimes it helps to educate not only the OP on the many options, but even the people in the debate.
For example, I didn't realize just how UNDER-educated I was in the realm of finance until I got into a mini-debate about investments. That was pretty soon after I started watching the H&A forum... and the information and debate that ensued (I think it was between me and Thinatos) made me realize that I didn't know as much about finances as I thought I did. I've been reading the finance-related posts since then, along with doing my own research, in an attempt to correct the misinformation I have picked up over the years.
Two people educated for the price of one! Not bad.
The only other thing I sometimes wonder about is how people who make the threads feel about the mods responding in their threads. If pheezer says "you're an idiot," does that person freak out? If VC says a response is "just wrong" does he mean that from an infraction viewpoint, or just an opinion? A forum I visited a looong time ago used to have mods start posts with [mod hat] or similar (not an actual tag) so people knew that the person was being serious from a mod point of view. VC, Than, and pheez often have good advice, but I think sometimes people don't know when they're simply responding or when they're serious about telling people to knock it off.
Last I checked the rules do not forbid, and in fact encourage, disagreeing / debate on the advice given in H/A. Which is the way it should be.
Edit: Not worth further mucking up the thread with this aside after the response but no it was not ladder theory (which is, of course, absurd) nor have I ever been infracted by VC.
True, but if the rules on debating are relaxed it becomes critical to emphasize that the other rules are still in force, so that things don't turn nasty or become personal.
Ladder theory is explicitly disallowed in the rules, there is no cause to debate it. That's the most common circumstance in which I've done that if you don't have something particular in mind.
When it happens you can report it and all of the mods will see your report. We're pretty good at ragging on each other (if you guys think you have it rough...) and it'll get the review it deserves. There's also the chance that you just have a handful of completely invalid opinions ("ladder theory", for instance).
I do this every time I catch it because I can't stand it either. It also doesn't make it any easier for people trying to search for previous problems. If you search in thread view mode, you can go read the OP of each different problem to see if any are similar to yours. Searching through 12 pages of each of 3 different threads to find all of the different questions asked is just not something anyone will ever do.
Pretty much all the time.
You'd have to ask him and you'll probably need to give him a link because none of us have perfect memories. If you disagree with his reply you can ask another H/A mod. It's why there are three of us (let's face it we could probably get by with fewer if we really had to).
I actually remember asking Ramius once like a million years ago if we could have a restricted mod-only font colour to use this way. Like only mods can ever post in PA orange. Then you'd know when we meant it and when we were arguing. In fact, I'm going to bring this up with him again, that can't be too hard on this version of the forums.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
And to be perfectly honest, nobody likes it when someone gets banned. There are like 7 or 8 clicks to make to do that.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH