...But at the same time its is easy to get frustrated at the guy who just joined and asks questions that have tons of answers already on the forum if they only used the search feature...
I love that some of you guys remember usenet! I am an oldhead for sure.I agree with that sentiment in general, and I would be most happy if the big social media sites would collectively die in a fire (especially Facebook). But it's also
worthwhile to remember that Back In The Old Days™ before modern social media there was Usenet, and to put it kindly it was not for the faint-hearted. That's where flaming was, if not invented (debatable), then at least elevated to a perverse art form. Even at its worst, TRF is like a meditation class compared to that.
This is where I must respectfully disagree. As a retired Data Architect I do not see "The Rocketry Form" as a knowledge repository. It's basic structure is to store "conversations". It is not truly organized topically. Yes, there are various topical subforums, but what I mean is, there is no good way to search by topic because there is no Wiki-like architecture to support curating topical knowledge.
For example, let's say the Noob wants to know whether Rustoleum is better than Krylon (Ok, I just made up something off the top of my head, I have no idea what kind of search results this will return - just go with the concept). There is no topical organization which consolidates information about paint characteristics. Instead, the search will return every single mention of the words "Krylon" and "Rustoleum". Can you imagine how many hits that will be?
For the Noob, how useful is the search result "my local store carries both Krylon and Rustoleum"? In addition, the noob may not know to look for abbreviated terms. Therefore, the noob will completely miss the answer he is looking for, because the keyword does not match: "I prefer 2X over Krylon for the following reasons..."
The existing search feature quite often is not the solution to a noob's question. Yes, sometimes it is, but depending on the keywords involved, quite often the search yields a lot of useless information. If seeing the same question over and over again annoys you (that's you plural), scroll on past. Else, attempt to answer the question. Simply telling a noob to "do a search" is often bad advice.
<g> When has the internet ever been anything else?
I remember when AOL opened its Internet Gateway. Before that, about 30% of the content on every usenet forum was an argument about netiquette that started out as an argument about something else. The other 70% of the content was users fretting that they didn't want the thread to degenerate into a flame war -- punctuated by reminiscences about how much better the SNR was back in the ARPAnet days. After the AOL newbies showed up, 90% of the content was explaining jargon and telling users NOT TO TYPE IN ALL CAPS -- then it all turned back into noise about how noisy usenet had become. If anything has changed, its that everybody is now an annoying noob who didn't have to learn any VMS or UNIX commands to get into the party (and the word "netiquette" now sounds quaint).
But I will accept @afterburner's assessment that there has been a change in tone on this forum in the
since they joined on May 8, 2012....wait.
insert >smiley< to indicate good-natured ribbing
This is where I must respectfully disagree. As a retired Data Architect I do not see "The Rocketry Form" as a knowledge repository. It's basic structure is to store "conversations". It is not truly organized topically. Yes, there are various topical subforums, but what I mean is, there is no good way to search by topic because there is no Wiki-like architecture to support curating topical knowledge.
For example, let's say the Noob wants to know whether Rustoleum is better than Krylon (Ok, I just made up something off the top of my head, I have no idea what kind of search results this will return - just go with the concept). There is no topical organization which consolidates information about paint characteristics. Instead, the search will return every single mention of the words "Krylon" and "Rustoleum". Can you imagine how many hits that will be?
For the Noob, how useful is the search result "my local store carries both Krylon and Rustoleum"? In addition, the noob may not know to look for abbreviated terms. Therefore, the noob will completely miss the answer he is looking for, because the keyword does not match: "I prefer 2X over Krylon for the following reasons..."
The existing search feature quite often is not the solution to a noob's question. Yes, sometimes it is, but depending on the keywords involved, quite often the search yields a lot of useless information. If seeing the same question over and over again annoys you (that's you plural), scroll on past. Else, attempt to answer the question. Simply telling a noob to "do a search" is often bad advice.
"What am I doing to make it better?"
Since I'm mainly a kit modifier and don't build scratch designs, I have a hard time deciding a rocket is worth a build thread. Most of the time I'll just post occasional updates on the Today thread
Things like putting a 38mm mount in an AT G-force, or putting basswood skins on a Star Orbiter just don't seem like beneficial threads.
I try to explain this to other old guys, that civilization fundamentally changes when we reach a certain population density. Lots of us do not get it, though.
Lmfao.... Forgot to add needs sugar fuel and pvc motor casing... LoooooooolI want to launch a rocket to space from my backyard as a jr high school project.
February 2020 National Geographic includes a nice pictorial feature about how locusts go from solitary and mostly harmless to social and destructively voracious. When enough locusts collect in one spot that they can rub against each others legs -- basically jogging each other's elbows -- their behavior changes dramatically. Imagine the plagues if they didn't need physical proximity to be triggered, if they could annoy/encourage each other at a distance over social media.
Well said. Posting a link to the topic is a great solution. I just don't get why anyone would post an answer like
"just Google it"
If you start you post with something like "I searched the forum, but couldn't find a recent/relevant thread about this problem..." well, you are still going to get a "just google it" response from the jerks because they are jerks.
I do occasionally have the fleeting urge to hit the caps lock and type "Maybe you could read the previous posts in this thread!" or "Did you even read all the way through the OP's question!?" But it happens often enough that the author of the misdirected bloviation will come back to amend the response and/or to apologize for having missed the point of the discussion that I (usually?) wait for the OP or somebody else to post the correction.
Edit: Never mind the fact that I am a professional bloviator who resides at the intersection of overconfidence and cluelessness.
Well said. Posting a link to the topic is a great solution. I just don't get why anyone would post an answer like
"just Google it"
We just have to keep reminding ourselves that we were new to the forum once also.
Just so. I submit that a person who does not consider this or, rather, a person who does not pause to ask "what if our roles were reversed" is a pretty good definition of a jerk.
I have been a jerk more times than I like to think about. I am probably being a jerk right now. I doubtless have been a massive and insufferable jerk at exactly the wrong time for somebody who needed me not to be a jerk -- and about things of greater moment than "I am bored with Estes model rockets. I have an idea for using old propane tanks as rocket motors. Does anybody know where I can buy blue-tipped kitchen matches at wholesale prices?"
When I returned to rocketry this past summer after an eon hiatus, I starting posting a slew of newbie questions to this forum. Probably well over a dozen in the course of a month or so. Some of them had to be repeats from distant past threads, but a search didn't reveal any predecessors. So I posted these questions and received nothing but patient, kind and very helpful replies. Some of those threads seem to still be going. Though I have a pretty thick skin, I don't recall a single person coming across as a jerk. No one told me to "just google that." No one talked down to me. That's why I kept coming back and will keep coming back, despite currently being in a rocketry weather hibernation.
+1 to all of this. The search function in this forum is much less useful than it could be.I must admit that searching for something on TRF is a pain. Results are totally random. No way to sort by date or alphabetically. And it would be nice if all the search results that end up going to the same thread were grouped together. I wish the software writers had given searching a higher priority as there is a wealth of information here, if you can find it.
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