annoyed by forums unlike here...

[lordofduct]

There have been 3 forums I frequented a LOT in the last several years.

www.segaxtreme.net, sega-16.com (a couple years back I was here a lot) and Here (racketboy.com). Coincidentally all retro video game websites.

There is a reason behind this... users from both forums are generally cool with each other, there isn't like 8 million users posting 50 messages a second (i just can't keep up with that), and you guys help people when asked.

The latter being the most important to me. I enjoy forums to supply help and to get help. I don't always receive the best answer, nor do I always give the best answer. But atleast we acknowledge to eachother that we needs some help and try our best.



other forums just aren't so freakin' helpful! Even to the topic they server, especially if it is for a specific product or something.

i.e., I go to the Ubuntu forums, there are posts after posts after posts about nonsense in the help sections. Stuff like 'how do I install this software?' and 'what is ext3'... shit you could simply google for answers on, or look through the ubuntu wiki for. It's like no one even bothers attempting to find their own answer for it first.

And all the other users eat it up. They get help instantly, everyone jabbers on about it, this that and the other. This happens at lots of forums I go to... forums for different software, forums for competitions and junk like that.

Now I have a problem, I google for answers, no luck. I search the FAQ and wiki (if available) on the site, no luck. I try my best for some time to solve the issue with no avail. So I hop on the respective forum, post my problem along with what I've done to try and rectify it...

and everyone freakin' ignores it. The thread gets buried with a day or two. The thing gets hits left and right... but no help. Not even from the admins in the forum placed there for this purpose.

i.e. - I'm in a competition right now hosted by Microsoft. There is a forum for discussing the competition with a section for questions about rules on the competition. I'm having a hard time understanding one of the rules and can't find the true answer too it... I post the question, no one answeres. FINALLY 2 weeks later someone posts in the thread saying, "yeah, I want to know this too", and maybe another person posts the same thing after that.

So it appears, this is a question atleast 2 or more people want answered, but NOOOOOO, no one bothers even saying "not sure, wish I could help you".




... of course there is always the "contact links" to contact them directly... but in the case of say ubuntu this is not true. And that isn't the point of this thread. The point is MOST "help forum's" out there suck balls and I'm here to say:

Racketboy.com, you and your users are a breathe of fresh air in an otherwise shit tastic world of incompitent fools who don't bother to breathe in your direction let alone acknowledge your existence.

[racketboy]

Appreciate it!

Basically, I think it comes down to the newbie to veteran ratio. We have newbies in here, but since there is slow but steady growth, the veterans far outweigh the newbies, so the newbies get plenty of helpful answers. Once more newbies come around the older newbies are becoming veterans themselves.

The only big forum I really enjoy is Ars Technica, but I don't frequent them nearly as much as I used to.

[Mozgus]

Ugh, I knew what you mean. For some reason, moron after moron will receive bountiful amounts of help on tech support forums I frequent, no matter how short and worthless their initial post was. It's as if the active users and even the mods simply enjoy playing guessing games with these people, typing up endless posts all beginning with 'Did you try ___?".

Meanwhile I enter with a serious question. My initial post has every detail they could possibly want, and I name off all the steps I already took, and most often I receive zero replies.

[Curlypaul]

It is a very friendly, helpful place to be this, and unlike other gaming forums no-one types like tHiS, or says anything like 'teh powniest', in fact I've had some pretty damn grown up discussions in here and seen very very minimal flaming occuring.

I remeber about a year ago when CoD on my PC developed this weird error message that prevented me from saving, I googled the test from the error message and found a couple of other people that had posted the problem in forums. There were some replies and a few suggestions (none of which worked) but the original posters had never gone back to say either what they did to solve it or to point out that it is still unsolved. That kind of behaviour upsets me as well

[racketboy]

Ugh, I knew what you mean. For some reason, moron after moron will receive bountiful amounts of help on tech support forums I frequent, no matter how short and worthless their initial post was. It's as if the active users and even the mods simply enjoy playing guessing games with these people, typing up endless posts all beginning with 'Did you try ___?".

Meanwhile I enter with a serious question. My initial post has every detail they could possibly want, and I name off all the steps I already took, and most often I receive zero replies.

That's because you already took care of the easy answers... duh

[Mozgus]

Ugh, I knew what you mean. For some reason, moron after moron will receive bountiful amounts of help on tech support forums I frequent, no matter how short and worthless their initial post was. It's as if the active users and even the mods simply enjoy playing guessing games with these people, typing up endless posts all beginning with 'Did you try ___?".

Meanwhile I enter with a serious question. My initial post has every detail they could possibly want, and I name off all the steps I already took, and most often I receive zero replies.

That's because you already took care of the easy answers... duh

My point. Too many of these forums don't actually have knowledgeable people. Just posers who have the troubleshooting sections of manuals memorized, at best.

[Droid party]

I consider myself a newbie when I compare my knowledge to the majority of people here, however I've never had anybody give me shit for being a "n00b who should be pwned" or something stupid like that. Nor have I seen anyone do it to anybody else.
People genuenly try to help for the sake of doing so and most of the people are speaking from a wealth of experience built up over years of gaming,modding and repairing.
It's a nice little comunity and that's why this is the only forum (period) that I post on.

[RadarScope1]

This is just a good place. Can't say exactly why, just is. I'm just glad I found it.

[The Apprentice]

God I know what you mean... A few months ago I asked on the Benheck forums if American Saturns can use Euro direct save carts, with the varying voltages and all, but got no answers while everyone was talking about new years coming up.

[Bev]

Couldn't agree with you more, except on one point:

So it appears, this is a question atleast 2 or more people want answered, but NOOOOOO, no one bothers even saying "not sure, wish I could help you".

To be honest... if I could find something that might be relevant (and nobody else was answering) I would post, but if I was completely clueless I wouldn't. The reason for this is because when I'm asking for help and see a reply, I assume it will be an answer. It's kind of disappointing to see a response and get your hopes up only to find it's not really any help at all.