They need a escape goat and a big one !!

I do not want that Job

To Finsawyer:

The issue here is not the rehashing but the ignorant questions. The poster (Lilboxerfrank) that you mentioned; I had written a reply to him, indicating him towards reading a few articles on homepower.com & some other links. But, instead of pressing 'post' I pressed 'delete'. Why?

Because if someone can't be bothered to do his homework, I can't be bothered to help him out and do his homework for him. So, instead of posting my reply (it was already written, so the work was done) I deleted it. Besides, we don't want to encourage such lazy questions here on the board.

There's a Dutch proverb: 'one idiot can ask more questions than 10 wise men can answer.'

There was another, similar question recently. Someone asked what generator to buy so he could sell power to the grid. That is, buy and maintain a genny AND the diesel fuel. The first time his question got deleted. Indignified, he asked why and reposted. IMO, it should have been deleted again. There's way too many polite and patient people on this board that will actually try to help him out.

Just my opinion, but one I value highly.

try looking at phpbb or vbulletin compared to scoop:

couple dozen stories on the front page (instead of 10)
ability to keep some threads sticky so they stay at the top (instead of an unread FAQ)
important, recently replied to threads stay first on page (not most recent posted)

yes, there will always be noobs, and their crap needs to get file 13'd, but the search function is hard to use, and the first 10 stories dont seem to have anything to do with your question, and are constantly changing. what are they to do?

if the new user had a bit more help, and the board looked a bit more like other boards, i think we would have better results.

Well, after doing this for about 4 years, I have just figured out that you can't do this kind of job without pissing off some people. I am not willing to consume my limited energy doing it anymore. I have a lot of my heart and soul invested in this website and would like to think I have helped keep it a useful and viable resource for DIY RE and helped keep it on track. Obviously some do not agree. I could go more in depth but will not.

Change is good. I may return, but for now I will let others do it or it won't get done, whichever.

This decision was not arrived at today, I have been considering it for some time, todays whining was simply the last straw.

Can we recruit someone to the editorial staff who is proficient at hacking perl, the base language which this board is written in, so sensible modifications can be implemented to the code. I have previously made several suggestions when the subject of photo file size has been discussed, as have others.

I also think the editor should leave one comment in a deleted post (his own) explaining why comments have been disabled. I presume this would require a modification to the code.

If the board ran under php, I would gladly offer my services. I have extensive experience with php, being webmaster over at swafl.org which runs phpnuke. I have built many custom modules for that site. I have also built a huge LAMP system (Linux, Apache, Mysql, Php)  for my employer.  But, in my considered opinion, Perl was written by aliens, probably lifted from that crashed ufo held at Roswell.

Instead of just complaining why not take the time, that others before you have done, and send a request for explanation "DONE WITHOUT ANGER!!!" ?

Peter: I have read a lot of your stuff ...good stuff, but this isn't the first time people have fired off at the ED. So NO he's not throwing in the towel so easily. Probably just sick and tired off childish atittudes.

I have an idea, EDITOR : Forward ALL the stuff to those who are complaining about your unpaid work, and have them try to do it, not just one day , but try a whole weeks worth that way you can take sometime off a vacation sort of if you wish.

As long as if have been on here I have only complain once, and that was only while trying to read through a flame war pointed towards another who gives his help out freely.

I for one would hate to see this website/service go away and would quickly offer my help in anyway possible whether through a subscription or bandwidth mirroring or even helping with editing incomings.
 POLL TIME!! how many of you complaining about the editor, are willing to give up say 6 hours of your everyday lives to filter this board? by everyday lives I mean 365 days of your lives.

FINSAWYER!!! who the hell do you think you are telling the editor to back off!! who the hell do you think keeps the other BS off of here?
Your jumping in on behalf of "Lilboxerfrank's rant" so I thought I'd jump in on the editors behalf.
YOU TRY DOING THIS WITHOUT PAY AND PUT UP PEOPLE LIKE YOU COMPLAINING .

Bruce S
coamanda: I agree PERL was written and stolen by aliens:-)

When the board was created years ago, I am not sure that we had editors at the time but everything was posted, it was a mess. Bringing in an editor seems to have cleared it up a bit, however in doing so I also think there has been some editorial bias towards some of the users that has also been not justified (personal opinion), this comes naturally when your dealing with this many people on a board of this type, an old saying "you can satisfy some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the time", so editor take note and don't despair because no matter what you do there will always be someone knocking on your door.  

And by the way, an editor is not a programmer, these are two separate things. Don't expect the editor to do everything. This site has limited staff running it, and it is free after all.

I back the idea and the editor and what he does (I may not always agree with his decisions all the time), but he must read between the lines and have no personal grudge or bias, the "delete key" must be used with temperance.  this is the reason I believe the editor is getting heat lately, involvement in a board like this after years -as he suggests brings it on naturally, so editor; get re-centered, look closely at what is being stated by many on the board and if you really think that we want you gone your sadly mistaken, we do need you and do want you, but the right attitude has to be their with it.

I have always stated - Protect the spirit of the board. I now change this to -"The prime directive of the editor is to protect the spirit of the board.", second is to protect the users.

You can't do this with bias or you risk both.

It wasn't all that long ago I was a newbie on this board.  Looking back at some of my posts, I realise I asked some pretty stupid questions (with the knowledge I have now, gained by some SERIOUSLY patient people replying to my ignorant questions).

But I asked them because after using php message boards almost exclusively since coming on the net, the software of this site is very confusing and not very user friendly to a novice.

I can honestly say that 90% of my "stupid questions" were the result of a failed attempt at searching.  I either didn't have the correct term (due to not knowing the "lingo" of the trade) or the search engine threw out so many completely irrelevant hits that sloughing through them all to find out what I needed to know would have taken DAYS!!

So on the side of the newbies posting repeat questions, I can side with them as to a slightly heavy editing hand.

But also saying that, I have been a moderator on three different forums (one exceeding 10,000 posts per day) and have ran two forums of my own.  I can honestly say that I am VERY glad that I no longer do any of the above.  It is a thankless job to run/moderate a board, and it can completely consume your life, both online and offline.

I've got also the feeling that in general some of the comments posted here are nowadays a bit too unfriendly. This maybe also happens, because people commenting are feeling busy and stressed.

Maybe these things could be cured somewhat by doing more work with a better FAQ section and also collecting together some 'good' postings as links. For example it might help quite a lot many newcomers, if all the posts by DanB would be under a link on the top of the page.

In general I'm feeling that the things are still quite OK with the board.

the problems i see are in the design of scoop, not perl. and yes, i know you can change some settings, but no noob is going to do that.

I'll volunteer to take over some minor sysop/editor duties.  I view that as the least I can do to pay back some of what I've received from the community.
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