Voice your problems with me (blargg) here

[Hamburgler]

Blargg sometimes feels emotionally unavailable during hugs.

[tepples]

Another time was when a new user posted a question in the Newbie Help Center, and your response was a link to "How to ask questions the smart way".

I don't see anything wrong with Mr. Raymond's guide to support forum netiquette. In fact, see the sticky that has since gone up in newbieville.

I think you just need to lighten up. Have a more welcoming attitude. You've provided the NESdev community with so much information, it's ridiculous. Your presence is most certainly a "plus"; I just think it could be more of a "plus" if you showed a little more optimism/positivity.

I agree that one shouldn't bite newcomers, but for every Plusle there must be a Minun, and for every Neo there must be a Smith.

[UncleSporky]

Another time was when a new user posted a question in the Newbie Help Center, and your response was a link to "How to ask questions the smart way".

I don't see anything wrong with Mr. Raymond's guide to support forum netiquette. In fact, see the sticky that has since gone up in newbieville.

There's nothing wrong with the guide, Celius is saying it's the way it was posted. Even if you don't sense it, for many people there can be an understood "hey, you're pretty stupid, I'm linking this guide rather than giving you the help you wanted because I only feel disdain for you." And when someone calls them on it, they can deny the whole thing and say they meant it to be helpful.

Some people post this way all the time, sounding down-to-earth but being as rude as possible.

However, I do not mean to say that Blargg does this, or that anyone else on the board does this; just that people can interpret it that way and they're not always wrong.


As for my own commentary on this thread, I haven't noticed Blargg in particular saying or doing anything really unreasonable, for the most part. I like a lot of people here and respect even more. Some people seem to be needlessly negative, but for the most part it's a good board full of great information.

[blargg]

Even if you don't sense it, for many people there can be an understood "hey, you're pretty stupid, I'm linking this guide rather than giving you the help you wanted because I only feel disdain for you."

Whenever I've posted it, it was to say "stop being selfish; put some effort into posting about your problem, so that the time we spend answering can have the most benefit". I make a a fair number of posts with what I consider kind of subtext, and I do believe that most people pick up on it, even if they can't put their finger on it (I'm saying that they are affected in a bad, non-constructive way). I try to avoid this, but it's difficult sometimes with the quality of some "help wanted" posts. It's all in perception, of course, which is why I work on trying to be sure I'm accurately perceiving whether someone is really being careless and selfish.

[Banshaku]

I don't think that it always because of people are selfish. I would more say that people are "lazy" and this is human nature People don't do effort unless they really need to.

Putting the "in your face" message about their selfishness/laziness won't bring any constructive criticism since people will never admit it in the first place anyway (human nature, again). Some people may start on a bad feet (don't know if it's english or not) and re-adjust once they "get used" to the community. The people that really have interest in the subject will make effort in the end and "fit-in". The others, they will just drop and go away.

So the snarky message like "Let me google this for you" or anything similar will not bring anything to any new member in the community: you're just wasting your time and there are other ways to say it more politely. I don't see any issues to use those kind of message for existing users when you want to be sarcastic (like I always like to do) and put some humor into it when original members are just plain lazy, why not?

In brief: It may be appropriate in some situation to point it out if humor is used adequately. In other, it doesn't bode well. The thing is to be able to figure out when it's appropriate or not to use them.

[ReaperSMS]

IMO the fellow you called out was long deserving of that, and the only real accusation to be made would be a lack of sugar coating. You were kinder and more soft-spoken than I would have been.

Threads like that one are why I usually avoid General Discussion, as they tend to be holy wars with no clear correct side.

[Xkeeper]

your name is similar to byuu which makes it hard to distinguish, please consider using "BLARRHGHGHGHHBFKHBFLBFKHBDFlbKHFDLBKHFBL" to make it easier.
if you can't tell these posts are sarcasm and the first one was also wrong, mistook him for byuu

[Jedi QuestMaster]

Yay! A bash Blargg thread!

Let's see... ummm...

no, that was Dwedit...

hmm, I don't think I have any beefs with you. Except for this:



I mean, what the hell is this supposed to be for?

[Celius]

Again, one cannot merely just "lighten up", and it's a bit frustrating to be told to do that.

Okay, that's fair enough. It's kind of like telling someone who has been diagnosed with depression to lighten up; it's not that easy. However, the online environment is a bit different from face-to-face interactions. When you're around someone and you're in a bad mood, there are various things people can pick up from you where they can tell you're in a bad mood. It can be very hard to hide what you're feeling. But when posting online, you are making a choice, every time you hit a key on the keyboard, to communicate a certain message. Your mood doesn't have to be put in the mix. Even if you're feeling like crap, you can write a sentence that indicates otherwise (or a completely neutral sentence that has no emotion).

With that said, I find when you are mixing in a negative tone, you are to some extent, going out of your way to mix it in; in other words, it's voluntary. If you're going to volunteer to write a post, you may as well volunteer to write a more positive post, than a negative post.

Now, about people posting generic questions, and giving little information. I see where you're coming from with this. It is in a lot of cases, a reflection of one's selfishness to simply post "how do I do this?" or "can someone post code that does this?", but a lot of times it isn't. For example, when I first came here, I asked questions and provided very little additional information with what I was trying to do, simply because I didn't know what additional information was required. I thought there were simple, single answers to a lot of the questions I asked. Often, the answer I got was "what exactly are you trying to do?" or "there's more than one answer to that question; it depends on what you're doing."

You need to first determine when exactly you are dealing with a user who doesn't know what additional information is required, and when you're dealing with someone who's just lazy, before you write something like "just f***ing google it".

I will fully admit, however, that I didn't at times listen to the responses given, and this isn't an acceptable behavior. Also, it might have had a lot to do with the fact that I was way in over my head; I had absolutely no clue what I was doing and I asked questions about things way beyond someone who doesn't even know how to code basic programs. In that aspect, any frustration with such users is completely understandable. The right thing to do with such users is probably to advise they start small, and learn more about programming in general before moving on to game programming. Unfortunately, a flaw of my character, impatience for working toward long-term goals, got in the way of me listening to such advise.

What I find funny is that in that scenario, blargg was kind enough to contact me through email and offer to help me out, as well as answer additional questions I had. That, I found very respectable. I benefited a lot from that. And during that time, I didn't get any of this negative tone from blargg that I'm talking about right now. And actually, that's probably why I found our conversations so helpful.

[tepples]

Whenever I've posted it, it was to say "stop being selfish; put some effort into posting about your problem, so that the time we spend answering can have the most benefit".

Is the following wording any better?

Would you please clarify your issue? That would make it easier for us to understand what's going wrong. Here are some tips on how to clarify a question.

Some people may start on a bad feet (don't know if it's english or not)

Close. "Some people may get off on the wrong foot." But foot analogies are lost on some.

So the snarky message like "Let me google this for you" or anything similar will not bring anything to any new member in the community: you're just wasting your time and there are other ways to say it more politely.

What's the most polite way to say what Google keywords produced a given result, in order to help improve the asker's web search skills? But I will admit that this was more important before we had a wiki.

your name is similar to byuu which makes it hard to distinguish

Ed, Edd, and Eddy have similar names, but few have trouble telling them apart. Likewise with lava dragon and mistake. But Eddie and Lucas, on the other hand...

[UncleSporky]

Even if you don't sense it, for many people there can be an understood "hey, you're pretty stupid, I'm linking this guide rather than giving you the help you wanted because I only feel disdain for you."

Whenever I've posted it, it was to say "stop being selfish; put some effort into posting about your problem, so that the time we spend answering can have the most benefit". I make a a fair number of posts with what I consider kind of subtext, and I do believe that most people pick up on it, even if they can't put their finger on it (I'm saying that they are affected in a bad, non-constructive way). I try to avoid this, but it's difficult sometimes with the quality of some "help wanted" posts. It's all in perception, of course, which is why I work on trying to be sure I'm accurately perceiving whether someone is really being careless and selfish.

Right, and again I hope you don't think I was accusing you of meaning that, just that some people interpret that way if the statement is blunt without friendlier context.

[Banshaku]

Close. "Some people may get off on the wrong foot." But foot analogies are lost on some.

Offtopic: For some reason I knew what the picture was going to be about I want to know someday where that "interest" came from. It's in many of your work. Maybe some inside joke or something? Or maybe this?

[tepples]

But foot analogies are lost on some.

Offtopic: For some reason I knew what the picture was going to be about I want to know someday where that "interest" came from.

Weebles by Playskool. A few generations of the toyline (such as 2004's "Weebleville") were made with molded faces and arms as opposed to the egg-shapes that Playskool just recently returned to. I was exposed to one of these sometime around 1996. But they seem to go back and forth between eggs vs. molded by generation, as does Nintendo with dragon-style Blargg and blob-style Blargg.

[peppers]

I would just like to say that not everyone in the world in an independent learner, some people have a much greater difficulty trying to learn from documents and need some help from others. This dose not mean they are stupid or less than those who can, its just each persons mind works in its own way. This is something that should be remembered.

[blargg]

If someone is clearly out of his depth and yet ignoring advice to try simpler things first, he's basically just asking you to do things for him under the guise of him doing it. It's within his capability to go back to simpler things, but he's choosing not to. That sometimes annoys me. It's hard not to see that as selfish, wasteful behavior.

I've no problem with someone who has attempted to understand and is asking for help, especially if he explains what his understanding is, so we know what to build on and so we can diagnose the shortcomings with current documentation. It's not basic questions that are annoying; it's questions that are due to not putting forth effort. See a recent thread about NES initialization for an example of good effort and the learner providing useful feedback so that those helping can see that they are indeed helping, and seeing what works/what can be improved.