State of the Forumverse Outside UNIX.com

When I started UNIX.com nearly two decades ago, online life was brutal. People formed groups in forums and email lists and relentlessly bullied new members and novices over the most petty and juvenile technical issues. It's seems better now that back then.

Lately, I've been participating in a number of different forums, and while the bullying and ad hominum attacks are much less than two decades ago, the problem based on human ego still persists.

What I have noticed is that forums that automatically grant status based on post counts and number of likes received and number of days on site tend toward exclusiveness and a small group of senior members dominate all question and answer.

In some forums I have participated in outside of here strange things have happened. Oddly, I have been bullied via PM when I answered a question posted by our own @RavinderSingh13. I answered a question in a public forum that Ravinder had asked me privately on WhatsApp. I promised Ravinder a public post when I had time. Later I had time, and posted my code; and got a nasty message from a forum leader explaining to me how I was interfering in his mentoring style. Truly astonishing juvenile behavior.

In that forum, small group of regulars think they must jump in and answer every question. These seniors indirectly discourage anyone outside of their informal group of members with forum status to provide answers to questions. Sometimes they bully new members and after they bully them (directly or indirectly) and the reaction is negative in the forum, these status members with standing will go back and edit their negative, bullying comments out. This means people who read the replies do not see the same comments that triggered the tension because the harsh comments get removed by the bullying status member who posted them. It's all so juvenile but that is life in the forumverse, it seems.

In another tech forum I've spent time in recently, it's the same social status game. A handful of senior members jump in and feel the need to reply and comment to every question, leaving very little opportunity for the new members to feel welcome to answer questions.

Also, I have noticed in the forumverse is that there are also a small number of trigger happy people of forum status who are quick to take the fun out of posting because they answer without understanding the question and make false technical claims without regard for the question asked. However, these trigger happy seniors never admit their mistakes and just continue on their line of nonsense, often backed up by their club friends only because they have been around for a long time. It's little different than street gang behavior, but is is online.

I guess this is just human nature. Ego, pride, selfishness, group think, and gang mentality.

Here, I have generally pushed back against this kind of elitism and tried to encourage people to participate, even if they might not be the top dog. I have made changes when I have felt the new members were being pushed down by the seniors.

It's unfortunate that many great tech offerings are supported on forums with a core group of ego-centric know-it-alls supported by years of like counts and days on site count who feel obligated to comment on every post. This kind of status power is not inclusive.

Here, we may not have the latest tech and this forum is long past it's peak days, but we do always strive to be inclusive, especially toward any new member who is a novice. It is the novice of today who will become the expert of tomorrow.

Alway Keep the Mind of the Beginner.

Peace.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki

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I penned the following in another forum yesterday:

Having started one of the "first generation" forums on the Internet nearly 20 years ago, nursed it though it's peak years when we had nearly 10K users on line at one time, naturally I have seen a lot of human activity and behavior in forums.

I think what many people often forget is that it is the novice of today who will be the expert of tomorrow.

What is important in every forum is the idea of inclusiveness, in my view. This cannot be overstated.

Managing a forum for two decades, one of the critical things which I have had to manage repeatedly, is to insure the senior guys and long timers take a step back and let the newcomers answer questions. There is rarely any single right way to solve a tech issue.

Often, in a forum a core group of guys will form over time, and they consider themselves the experts and they will feel obligated to answer every question even when newer members want to answer and can easily answer. This damages inclusiveness. Often, seniors will indirectly discourage others with less post count or years on site by not giving way.

Being inclusive means the senior experts intentionally take a step back and encourage others to answer questions; and the seniors step in when a question is not answered.

If the seniors of a forum get into the habit of jumping in to answer every question and do not give space and permit those with a lesser post count or badge power to answer, the forum grows into a kind of exclusive club versus inclusive.

As a side story, we once had a beginner who loved to answer questions and we had some moderators making fun of that newbie behind his back. I had to break up that group (even though they were top experts in their field), as they were not being inclusive. When you run a forum for many decades (via the ups, the downs, the changes), you see people go from novice to lead systems engineer or even CTO.

Once, a number of years ago, I was on the phone working on getting a new CDN set up. The guy on the phone found out I was behind a certain forum, and he started to get excited and said, Man, I was a novice way back then and your forums helped me so much! Whatever you want, it's yours for free for a long as you need it.. From novice to expert. That is how it works,

Seniors in forums should step back and work hard to insure that all new comers are welcome and included and there is not an exclusive club of handful of experts who jump in and answer all questions.

This is inclusiveness and it is very important, based on my two decades in the forumverse.

Reference:

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As you say it has to do with ego... I always thought it was, but then noticed it was more Linux world that was affected rather then other U*X flavour, so started to meditate why...

My conclusion is in a world of "open" and free soft since you cannot make money on the OS or Soft you are left with "Services" or whatever you call it, in other words your knowledge you are trying to value in order to get a contract.

Being able to show your "authority" and believed competence is what it is all abut and what better to show what you are in forum X, or Y, and what does it cost you? Just the time to answer to mostly beginners questions, because I have noticed when the questions are less obvious and addressed to highly qualified, you see less, or worse they are replied only in vendors support forums, not that I am against them I was once a highly respected member of one and member of a few of them, those are the place you learn the most if you are active, only to have access you need a maintenance contract.... And so for little enterprise it may just not be possible (financialy...)and as I said previously mostly UNIX or oracle... not Linux except vendors of Linux enterprise solutions...

So this ego of some to me makes only sense in order to show off in you CV...

Now my 2 cents

Many elderly like me tend because they were brilliant to forget the world changes and so does the way you look at things even in IT therefore the solution they can provide if good, may just not be in the mood of time, or todays trend...( what are the trendy languages today?...) and if you have beginners why show them a short ( or complicated ) one liner ( or more sofistcated) script in a programming when the person was told it can be done with simple unix command ( e.g. NOT sed awk perl...) and expected a solution with such in order to learn more commands and use man pages?

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Yes, I think you hit the nail right on it's head.

I have noticed on a few forums lately people aggressively answer questions in order to be the expert and some feel like they must answer and always be the top dog is some kind of high school playground kind of way.

That must be why when a new person comes in (like me) and starts answering questions or asking advances ones, it is a kind of threat to the livelihood of those who ride the authority model you mention, for profit. These top guns must attack our credibility because it threatens their livelihood, so it seems.

Here is a simple example:

Yesterday, I requested a simple feature for Discourse over at meta and that action (which I considered a act-of-kindess to help them ) ruined my day, LOL. The feature was simple. Permit Discourse to separate the mission critical email channel (like password resets, registration, email logins) from the digest, update email channel. This way, when the digest channel is really busy, the mission critical stuff does not get stuck in the queue.

This is basic communication reliability 101 from 30 or longer years ago, nothing really hard to imagine; and some know-it-all starting pulling his trigger, shooting at me like I was some kind of baby who just hatched out an egg. He basically implied I was an email abuser. Totally off target, but full of authority and. forum points LOL I was in shock to see a nice Sunday turn into a battle with someone over something so trivial and so obviously a good idea.

Of course, that guy is one of the big authorities there, so he has to answer all the posts and comment all the time to keep up his authority; and he has to pull his trigger every chance he gets to put others down.

If the co-founder had of made the same suggestion I made, the same guy shooting at me would have been very supportive of the idea.

It's so juvenile really....

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This reminded me why I left Techtarget and when years after when asking me if I would not reconsider my postion I said no way...

When I posted I was moderated and message was removed as not respecting the rules (???) but someone from Arabia made copy/paste of my posts before deletion reposted and got acclaimed...
I was told because I did HP vendor related replies ( In HP-UX forum) like suggesting to buy mirror-ux because you cant mirror root disk without, or the serial number of a HBA or the firmware rev. or patch number etc...

I think it is great for all people to post and provide solutions. Old, new, trendy, old fashioned.

My point was about inclusiveness.

When I say seniors that is not a statement about human age. In my discussion, seniors is about their points score or forum power on a forum to establish authority or yield forum power over others. it's not about biological age or old versus new technology, at all.

It's about giving everyone a chance and encourage all solutions - being inclusive.

Please do not confuse my discussion about seniors as having anything to do with human biological age. That is not what I said in my discussion.

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We agree...
:+1:

A little off topic

In my opinion you are all very big optimists. Only "inclusiveness" will remain in this area soon and the question will disappear itself :grin: :sob:

I’m sure that the new site design will attract the linux GUI users who earlier bypassing the stern
command line asceticism of the old site :smiley:

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Based on the stats, even without the new site being permitted to be indexed by Google, the new site is more active from logged in users (and we are in slow, pandemic mode as well)

If we permit the new site to be indexed by Google, it will get much more lively.

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