It seems when a hot topic has come up on a certain popular forum in Creative Cow, I have noticed that people are becoming more and more hostile towards each other. Perhaps it's because of the recent US presidential debates that have been lighting up the air waves as all it takes is a jab at someone's personality and the whole thread gets lost in a he said she said, or more likely a he said he said, or maybe even a she said she said. It usually starts as a healthy discussion of workflow, then it becomes a battle of intellect and then it turns personal. I have been a part of a couple of recent threads that have been removed due to overtly personal attacks that aren't really right for a public forum, which is a shame as any helpful information is now deleted forever from the cyber ethos. 2000 years from now when someone finds the Creative Cow server hard drives in a pile of dust, those deleted threads that contained color commentary and video history will not be there for historians to try and glean any information from these lives and times. Bummer.
In an effort to preserve the history and helpful information that we all contribute to every day let's try and keep the discussions healthy and light, shall we? It's okay to disagree, it's okay to hash things out, but please try not to make it personal if you disagree with what someone has said. Remember, if we weren't hiding behind our keyboards and we were all sitting in the same room, the discussions would be more polite. Keep that in mind when participating in this virtual world. Cheers.
Jeremy said: "It's also not fair to have a forum leader totally crap on someone who obviously doesn't know their stuff as well as the rest of the people in the thread."
Kathlyn and I always cringe when this happens. We hate it. In fact, we have always hated it and once had to get rid of one of the top leaders in our FCP forum because of it. He hated newbies. Couldn't stand them. He'd insult them personally. (That said, I will and do suggest from time to time that a newbie use the search engine or look down the list of posts when they come in and ask the same question that is two or three posts down in the thread. Laziness is not a virtue to me.)
But we have all been newbies once and in some areas of experience, we are all newbies.
Kathlyn and I have always felt that if a leader doesn't like answering a question, then don't answer that one. Let someone else do it.
In fact, we have noticed over the years that if the leaders who answered the question before stay out of it, then the ones who were newbies a little while ago will chime in to answer the question for today's total newbies. It is almost like they are saying to themselves when they see the question, "Ew, pick me! Pick me! I know this one!" And so they answer the question that is likely the only one on the board that they could answer. And they feel good in the process. They are contributing and they feel a part of the community.
We have always felt that the leaders should answer, well "leaderly" questions.
The newbies will answer the easier ones.
And if I have let you down in any way, Jeremy, then you have my apologies. It's rough for three people to administer a site that gets such incredible traffic and such a huge volume of users. You do your best and hope that you are reading everyone correctly but I don't kid myself that I or anyone could always get it right every time when you are dealing with such astronomical numbers at the pace that they come in here at the COW.
Thanks for posting that, Ron. I love the fact that you can pretty much say what you want on the Cow without it getting policed. It's important to me, and it has not been my experience on other forums, that's why I hang out here so much. I can count two posts in the last month or so that have been removed. One for 'OTness' and one that just plain got out of hand and spiraled into name calling and one-upsmanship that goes nowhere. The problem is not with the Cow at all. It's a fair place to air out your opinions while gaining valuable real life workflow information, or maybe i should say that the other way around. I hope you don't feel like you have to defend the cow here as the cow is not the problem. It's just a shame when people will deliberately attack someone trying to help them instead of taking the high road and admitting to their shortcomings or having a frequent poster help them by talking through it, or simply back away from the keyboard and not type that knee jerk reaction. It's also not fair to have a forum leader totally crap on someone who obviously doesn't know their stuff as well as the rest of the people in the thread. I have done that before even though I try not to. It's not constructive. Even if someone is wrong, they don't like to be told that they are wrong. It's hard to let someone down easy online as there's no body language to pick up on and verbal inflection to percept and I don't care what anyone says, emoticons don't replace human facial muscles, but it's a start I guess.
As the guy who is one of three that removes posts (or posters) from the COW, I feel it quite important to set the record straight on this issue...
I removed one person in the last couple of months, along with their comments and their posts. In the last couple of months, over 700,000 totally unique visitors have visited us in each of those two months (according to Google Analytics). So as a percentage that is QUITE astronomically small.
Why did I remove them? Noise. Because they personally insulted me, Walter Biscardi and anyone else that didn't agree with them? No. I removed them because of noise. There was no signal in their remarks. They also wouldn't listen and didn't debate. Debates are fine, even when you don't agree with me or the leaders in the COW. But when you cross the line into a non-ending series of cheap-shot replies to anything that is said by one of our leaders or one of our members, then you are likely on a joy ride right out of the COW -- if you don't back off.
We have plenty of caustic people in the COW. Some who are downright toxic at times. That is not the issue and as long as things stay on-topic and don't cross the line into personal attacks, that is fine. When they do, we will warn you -- more than once. When you don't listen after repeated warnings, then I will likely be the one to step in and play guard dog with you. If you don't get the message there, then you will likely be one of the three to four people a year that get booted out of the COW.
3 to 4 out of a year? Yes. Considering that in that amount of time, we have had nearly eight million log-ins during that time, it isn't like we get rid of much. (In fact, I just ran over to Google Analytics and did a search over just the last five months and we had over 2.7 "totally unique visitors"). But if we didn't cull the noise and those who thrive on it, the COW would have long ago degenerated into the same kind of bullying and crap that is seen on many forums on the net; forums where the four or five loudest mouths in the room take over the place and the "mellow" people can just shut up or get out of the way. Here at the COW we have worked hard to build a place where people can visit -- and with rare, very rare exceptions -- feel that they can take part in a community that is largely very respectful.
For the 3 to 4 a year who cross the line that we set long ago and are culled from the herd, I say fine -- it is a price that I, Kathlyn and Tim Wilson are quite willing to pay. And as for their lost "content," I am sorry that those who replied to the person that was just removed here in the blogs lost their comments -- some of which had some good stuff in them. (We can't help that, as we can't lose comments and yet keep the children of the comments -- they both get lost.) But as for losing the now departed poster? I say, good riddance. Walter Biscardi couldn't make a comment without being attacked in nearly every one of his blog entries. It got tiresome it was so predictable. He couldn't say anything without being challenged in a very disrespectful way and yet when I "mirrored" the poster to show them what they were doing, they were quite unwilling to see that that is exactly what they were doing. They didn't like it. They decried my behaviour, when I was doing it as a technique I learned in sales that is called "pacing" and "mirroring" and I was doing it to show them what they were doing. I hoped they'd learn something from it. They didn't. Now they are gone.
So, in the end, seeing that it is just after the Super Bowl™, let's take score: One person removed in the nine months or so that the blogs have been open? Three to four people in a year in the entire COW, which gets nearly three quarters of a million visitors a month? That's all that gets removed in a year around here?
It's becoming more commonplace now on the Cow for those who "know it all" to now resort to name calling to supposedly win an argument. It's quite annoying and as one who has donated countless hours of my time and knowledge as a volunteer to this great site, it's rather disheartening.
For every question there are probably 50 answers and most likely a dozen of those will be correct. With everything we do there are dozens of ways to do things and what works for one may not work for the other.
Now there ARE some absolutes, especially when it comes to things like network and broadcast specs. Whatever that particular network or broadcaster says, well, that's what goes.
And of course there are the usual Avid vs. Premiere vs. FCP vs. Quantel vs. The Next Big Thing arguments which are completely boring. If you really want to know which is the best system, then get out there and try them all. The best system for you is not necessarily the best system for me. I've cut on Avid, Media 100 and FCP. FCP works for me and until I feel it does not meet my needs, then I will continue to use it. Someone telling me all the failings of FCP, the "greatness" of another system and resorting to name calling in a forum is not going to convince me to change my mind. All that will do is tell me to ignore any future posts and advice from that person.
So think before you post. If you don't have anything useful to add to a discussion, then don't post.
"Maybe we should post an FYI for new posters as to the tendency for people who spend 10 hours a day in front of video monitors to be a bit sarcastic, testy or grumpy. "
Isn't that called experince? As a matter of fact, you can probably judge a person's experince from their testiness, unless of course the person being judged has one those hearts made up of gold.
All I have observed is a bunch of cookie cutter clone millionares all trying to say clever things and insult one another.
Seriously, I have observed that sometimes it is the younger or shall we say less forum savvy posters who may misinterpret sarcasm for rudeness. There is a fine line between the two.
Maybe we should post an FYI for new posters as to the tendency for people who spend 10 hours a day in front of video monitors to be a bit sarcastic, testy or grumpy. But we are all here to help.
People here are passionate about what they do, and I think that's a great thing, but when you are passionate about stuff, the flip side is it can also make you touchy on that very subject.
So the next time you feel that fire coming on, maybe pretend your talking about statistics or needlepoint or maybe politics. Yeah - politics. There's a subject that doesn't get people angry...
