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We've all seen the confilcting opinions about newbies flung around here. The arguments:
They spam and write little worth reading. This view will be held until they prove us wrong;
They might be bad, they might be okay, you can't tell until you've seen them in action. Also, the disres[ect given to them is out of order. We hate spam too.
Not too sure of anything but my uncertainty, on monday i decided to go undercover. A newbie, with a 1 week plan to test all the stereotypes and their alternatives to see the reaction and understand the newbie phenomenon.
You may well have seen my (all too short, but i'll get to that in time) spell posts under the alias of 'Slam man'.
I apologise for the deceit, but i felt it had to be done, to maybe help clear up this situation.
The plan - an outline:
Day 1- introduce my presence
Day 2- a little harmless spam from someone who doesn't know better
Day 3- possibly more spam, depending on whether have response yet or not. Start stuff on sony forum.
Day 3 / 4 to 5 – be nice, like a good poster, see how people react.
Day 6 – start a console wars topic. Clear strong bias towards sony, ps2
Day 7 – continue console wars stuff.
Day 8 – evaluate any more feedback, no more input at this time.
All this was to be done within the context of someone who's literary skills are quite rough around the edges, and who is alien to the forums, their structure and etiquette.
Day 1:
I register. Disengaging my forum knowledge, and finding the first natural port of call, fog chat, to be a little overwhelming, i figure the logical thing to do would be to introduce myself. Immediately i was assaulted with unfriendly responses. Yes, it was unintelligent spam, but it was my 'very first post'. A little harsh?
I think 'assault' was the right word. It was intended at a friendly introduction, and foot in the door, whilst establishing the nature of my role.
Moving onto my second topic, appropriately enough one that had been running about newbie treatment, i looked for a slightly more friendly response. Nope, not really, more people looking down on me or mocking my post.
Trying to embrace a natural feeling of hurt and dislike of the response and responders respectively, i moved on to the sony forum ahead of schedule, looking for a niche where i could post openly.
It just felt the same. No reason to believe anything i could post would receive a less hostile reaction.
At this point i gave up. Why? Because, following my newbie instincts, i felt no reason at all to post anything else. Just deflated and disillusioned.
Conclusions:
We're generally very hostile to newbies, and pretty thoughtless to how they may react to posts we direct at them. If they come in with no knowledge of the enjoyment that can potentially be found in the forums, they see no reason to stay when they get shot down. Just the gad? If they have any confidence left that they have a hope of it, they might stay, but they are going to have a pretty big dislike of a fair number of forum members by the time they're regular.
What does this mean for the site?
Less competition for gads, maybe it's a motivator behind some regualrs' actions. Not an accusation, just a side thought.
For SR, it must involve a financial loss. Without the forums keeping me close to the site, i'd probably be very distant from the company, and have spent a lot less money here. I'm sure it's the same for a LOT of other people.
For the newbies that do stay, hostility to regulars, be it individually or as a collective.
For the site as a whole, the loss of potential growth and lost new input and opinions can only detract from the site's diversity and thorough quality of input.
Also, here i'd like to put forward a suggestion. Since fog chat usually takes over one full page of new topics, to most people a lot of these topics will be spam. That suggests to me that the reason newbie spam is targetted is because of the red/brown letters of the name.
In other words, HYPOCRITES should think a little more before they type about spam in chat.
Newbies could well turn into good, valued posters even if their talent seems bleak at first. Everyone has to (and all of us did, in respect to how the forums worked) learn at some time.
After learning how the forums worked a little better, 'slam man' would have been able to contribute with relevant stuff, and would have known what kind of posts not to make.
The grammer would still have been bad, but i'm certain you all know about how much awful spelling and grammer is used, without anyone batting an eyelid.
Making Things Better:
This would have all been a total waste of time if it didn't at least have a chance of leading to an improvement in newbie forum life.
Two main points. -Education, to get newbies to a good level of post, and, -Acceptance that they won't necessarily be particularly good at first, but should be treated with respect and tolerance.
Specifically, possibly a forum for newbies, and maybe notables to help them along, if they choose, where they can be able to write stuff without offending people and have somewhere to communicate with other newbies in a kind of 'safe' environment.
Also, clearer guidance. Those guidelines at the main chat page are a good start, but not very comprehensive (though more detailed stuff would still have to be very user-friendly) and won't necessarily be seen, even. An e-mail to newly registered members and more prominant place on the site (it's own page with a clear link on chat) could help this along.
Meanwhile, if regulars were encouraged to treat newbies better, possibly with guidelines like for the newbies, sanctions taken against persistant and unjustified newbie-bashers (banning in extreme cases?) and self policing - if other notables stand up for newbies, it'd definitely help.
Here's to a better place!
They spam and write little worth reading. This view will be held until they prove us wrong;
They might be bad, they might be okay, you can't tell until you've seen them in action. Also, the disres[ect given to them is out of order. We hate spam too.
Not too sure of anything but my uncertainty, on monday i decided to go undercover. A newbie, with a 1 week plan to test all the stereotypes and their alternatives to see the reaction and understand the newbie phenomenon.
You may well have seen my (all too short, but i'll get to that in time) spell posts under the alias of 'Slam man'.
I apologise for the deceit, but i felt it had to be done, to maybe help clear up this situation.
The plan - an outline:
Day 1- introduce my presence
Day 2- a little harmless spam from someone who doesn't know better
Day 3- possibly more spam, depending on whether have response yet or not. Start stuff on sony forum.
Day 3 / 4 to 5 – be nice, like a good poster, see how people react.
Day 6 – start a console wars topic. Clear strong bias towards sony, ps2
Day 7 – continue console wars stuff.
Day 8 – evaluate any more feedback, no more input at this time.
All this was to be done within the context of someone who's literary skills are quite rough around the edges, and who is alien to the forums, their structure and etiquette.
Day 1:
I register. Disengaging my forum knowledge, and finding the first natural port of call, fog chat, to be a little overwhelming, i figure the logical thing to do would be to introduce myself. Immediately i was assaulted with unfriendly responses. Yes, it was unintelligent spam, but it was my 'very first post'. A little harsh?
I think 'assault' was the right word. It was intended at a friendly introduction, and foot in the door, whilst establishing the nature of my role.
Moving onto my second topic, appropriately enough one that had been running about newbie treatment, i looked for a slightly more friendly response. Nope, not really, more people looking down on me or mocking my post.
Trying to embrace a natural feeling of hurt and dislike of the response and responders respectively, i moved on to the sony forum ahead of schedule, looking for a niche where i could post openly.
It just felt the same. No reason to believe anything i could post would receive a less hostile reaction.
At this point i gave up. Why? Because, following my newbie instincts, i felt no reason at all to post anything else. Just deflated and disillusioned.
Conclusions:
We're generally very hostile to newbies, and pretty thoughtless to how they may react to posts we direct at them. If they come in with no knowledge of the enjoyment that can potentially be found in the forums, they see no reason to stay when they get shot down. Just the gad? If they have any confidence left that they have a hope of it, they might stay, but they are going to have a pretty big dislike of a fair number of forum members by the time they're regular.
What does this mean for the site?
Less competition for gads, maybe it's a motivator behind some regualrs' actions. Not an accusation, just a side thought.
For SR, it must involve a financial loss. Without the forums keeping me close to the site, i'd probably be very distant from the company, and have spent a lot less money here. I'm sure it's the same for a LOT of other people.
For the newbies that do stay, hostility to regulars, be it individually or as a collective.
For the site as a whole, the loss of potential growth and lost new input and opinions can only detract from the site's diversity and thorough quality of input.
Also, here i'd like to put forward a suggestion. Since fog chat usually takes over one full page of new topics, to most people a lot of these topics will be spam. That suggests to me that the reason newbie spam is targetted is because of the red/brown letters of the name.
In other words, HYPOCRITES should think a little more before they type about spam in chat.
Newbies could well turn into good, valued posters even if their talent seems bleak at first. Everyone has to (and all of us did, in respect to how the forums worked) learn at some time.
After learning how the forums worked a little better, 'slam man' would have been able to contribute with relevant stuff, and would have known what kind of posts not to make.
The grammer would still have been bad, but i'm certain you all know about how much awful spelling and grammer is used, without anyone batting an eyelid.
Making Things Better:
This would have all been a total waste of time if it didn't at least have a chance of leading to an improvement in newbie forum life.
Two main points. -Education, to get newbies to a good level of post, and, -Acceptance that they won't necessarily be particularly good at first, but should be treated with respect and tolerance.
Specifically, possibly a forum for newbies, and maybe notables to help them along, if they choose, where they can be able to write stuff without offending people and have somewhere to communicate with other newbies in a kind of 'safe' environment.
Also, clearer guidance. Those guidelines at the main chat page are a good start, but not very comprehensive (though more detailed stuff would still have to be very user-friendly) and won't necessarily be seen, even. An e-mail to newly registered members and more prominant place on the site (it's own page with a clear link on chat) could help this along.
Meanwhile, if regulars were encouraged to treat newbies better, possibly with guidelines like for the newbies, sanctions taken against persistant and unjustified newbie-bashers (banning in extreme cases?) and self policing - if other notables stand up for newbies, it'd definitely help.
Here's to a better place!
Page:
Wasn't there a topic by a newbie in FOG chat about worms that got complimented by one of the notables?
Surely not all the newbies are constant irritating spammers
Surely not all the newbies are constant irritating spammers
That's a good point. 3000 words does seem somewhat plithy when compared to the gigantic Ant stories, as well as those made by Grix. Not forgetting Dan2k1's topics.
stephenw18 wrote:
> Some Newbies are not crap at things. Check out my Review for the legend of
> Zelda - Majora's mask I did today. It's massive and about 3000 characters long.
> It took me ages but it will hopefully be worth it.
Massive?? Read my next story if you want massive, which will be up on FOG Prime in around 3-4 days.
Ant: Shamelessly plugging
> Some Newbies are not crap at things. Check out my Review for the legend of
> Zelda - Majora's mask I did today. It's massive and about 3000 characters long.
> It took me ages but it will hopefully be worth it.
Massive?? Read my next story if you want massive, which will be up on FOG Prime in around 3-4 days.
Ant: Shamelessly plugging
Hey, we've all spammed once in a while.
stephenw18 wrote:
> Some Newbies are not crap at things. Check out my Review for the legend of
> Zelda - Majora's mask I did today. It's massive and about 3000 characters long.
> It took me ages but it will hopefully be worth it.
you SPAM the PS2 forum so you are
> Some Newbies are not crap at things. Check out my Review for the legend of
> Zelda - Majora's mask I did today. It's massive and about 3000 characters long.
> It took me ages but it will hopefully be worth it.
you SPAM the PS2 forum so you are
Umm.. dunno. But I like the name.
DO you remember when I was a newbie? I certainly don't.
I think that we should all learn to live and let live.
If you don't like a newbies post then ignor it.
If they post rubbish several times in one day then mention it and give them a few pointers.
If anything, constructive criticism like gramma and spacing etc...
I think that most people here are too harsh when it comes to a newbies console wars topic - how are they to know that it's been done billions of times?
They've only just arrived remember!
If you don't like a newbies post then ignor it.
If they post rubbish several times in one day then mention it and give them a few pointers.
If anything, constructive criticism like gramma and spacing etc...
I think that most people here are too harsh when it comes to a newbies console wars topic - how are they to know that it's been done billions of times?
They've only just arrived remember!
Page: