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Rude replies

J

Jedii

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 20, 2012
116
0
I love the macrumours website, but some of the curt replies to peoples simple questions ( whether or not they use search etc ) are bordering on rude and obnoxious.

It should be a community spirit on here we're all fans of the same products, so when someone asks a question which may be simple to you, consider your responses before belittling a new comer, or someone who simply doesn't know, and wants another human being to reply, rather than a google search.
 
Not to make excuses but people tend to act more harshly it seems when interacting on the internet as opposed to face to face. If you see a post that you think is inappropriate then please report it (that little triangle icon on the lower left of the post). and the moderators will review and take appropriate action.
 
The internet is faceless and anonymous. Anyone from any country our social background can join. My advice is to just ignore any posts you don't like and don't let it get to you.

Personally I think it's quite funny people get so heated about comments made by people they don't even know.
 
tekno said:
The internet is faceless and anonymous. Anyone from any country our social background can join. My advice is to just ignore any posts you don't like and don't let it get to you.

Personally I think it's quite funny people get so heated about comments made by people they don't even know.
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I agree and those up/down vote buttons contribute to the cruelty.
 
OP - There's plenty of community spirit; just ignore those members who aren't contributing to it (or who are actively trying to ruin it). If you post a question and get a snarky answer, ignore it like tekno suggests. The snarks crave attention; don't give them the satisfaction. ;)

And like maflynn says: if you experience truly unhelpful comments when you post a question, you can report them. Being impolite isn't against the rules, but off-topic posts are.
 
You have to remember too that without context you can't always tell whether they are truly being helpful (and are simply curt) or are being sarcastic or rude.

You do also have to keep in mind that this is a forum where all messages are archived "forever", and people who stick around the forums long enough start to see the same old topics brought up over and over again. I wonder if GGJStudios ever gets tired of copy/pasting that message he has about viruses on the Mac. Or, perhaps on a more basic level, the fact that he HAS a canned message that he copy/pastes tells me that he's resigned to the fact that people will ask the same questions over and over.

But then you also have to remember that answers change over time, so it is sometimes appropriate to re-ask about certain topics and not simply refer to a thread you found on Google that is 3 years old.

And if someone thinks your topic of discussion is stupid, well, you might just be redeemed one day. Just look back onto threads where people were ostracized and ridiculed for talking about the possibility that Apple would release an mp3 player, or switch to Intel chips, or build a tablet that does NOT run OS X.

But if a response is outright rude, feel free to report it. I always do.
 
Peace said:
I agree and those up/down vote buttons contribute to the cruelty.
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Agree 100%



Edit: I am perplexed with the reasoning behind the down vote to this post. The post I agreed with remained untouched yet in my agreeing with the post I opened myself up to negative feedback. Not like it matters, but this illustrates the point I agreed with very clearly.
 
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I'm not sure which one I find more annoying…

Rude replies or sarcastic replies in every freaking post (you know who you are!)
 
Yeah, I don't respond to many threads just becasuse I feel like I'm going to sound rude or sarcastic. I wish people would more of a filter when they are online.
 
Jedii said:
I love the macrumours website, but some of the curt replies to peoples simple questions ( whether or not they use search etc ) are bordering on rude and obnoxious.

It should be a community spirit on here we're all fans of the same products, so when someone asks a question which may be simple to you, consider your responses before belittling a new comer, or someone who simply doesn't know, and wants another human being to reply, rather than a google search.
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Hate to say it but...

hello-there-welcome-to-the-internet.jpg
 
maflynn said:
Not to make excuses but people tend to act more harshly it seems when interacting on the internet as opposed to face to face. If you see a post that you think is inappropriate then please report it (that little triangle icon on the lower left of the post). and the moderators will review and take appropriate action.
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The only difference between IRL and online is pople use subtle sarcasm irl. They're both rude, they just sugarcoat irl. lol
 
marcusj0015 said:
The only difference between IRL and online is pople use subtle sarcasm irl. They're both rude, they just sugarcoat irl. lol
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Part of the issue is the lack of tone and context. Especially if someone lets other things happening to them, influence what they do and say online, you get drastically different posts from what they actually think or feel about the subject. And, things like :rolleyes: and ;), can also be taken the wrong way. Really, no one...well at least almost no one, really truly wants to be an @$$ online.

And, "Check the previous two posts" can mean "You may want to read the above two posts again, I don't think you quite understood them." or it could mean "COME ON, YOU HAVE TO READ THE POSTS ABOVE NOW!!!!!!!!!". Just depends on how people interpret your posts.

iamjose said:
Yeah, I don't respond to many threads just becasuse I feel like I'm going to sound rude or sarcastic. I wish people would more of a filter when they are online.
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The scary part, is that many people DO filter what they say, just not enough. I'd hate to hear what people really think when they read some posts here.
 
rdowns said:
Dude, that shipped sailed long ago.
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No it didn't, there is still a strong community spirit among the veterans from before all the riffraff got into the Apple community, and you know it. It is not limited to MR members from back then, and includes most (if not all) pre-iPhone Apple-users who are members of MR. Surely, the sense of community may have taken the form of mob-mentality, but it's there nonetheless. Same, same but different.
 
shinobi-81 said:
No it didn't, there is still a strong community spirit among the veterans from before all the riffraff got into the Apple community, and you know it. It is not limited to MR members from back then, and includes most (if not all) pre-iPhone Apple-users who are members of MR. Surely, the sense of community may have taken the form of mob-mentality, but it's there nonetheless. Same, same but different.
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Really? You've been here a whole month and you think you know what this place was like before "all the riffraff got in"?

MR had an awesome sense of community at one time. Members, mods and admins were all active participants. There was much less need for moderation as mods were active participants and were able to deal with rule infractions in a friendly way within threads. Today, the mods and admins function as little more than nanny state policeman and contribute very little in posting. IMO, some of them are too disconnected from the "community" to effectively moderate it. It's likely your only interaction with them is by personal messages sent about your violating a rule.

In addition, many, many, many long-time forum members have left over the sites' degradation of community and heavy handed moderation. Couple that with the influx of people and this place isn't even close to what it once was.
 
rdowns said:
Today, the mods and admins function as little more than nanny state policeman and contribute very little in posting.
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I have to disagree with you in that.

I can easily say that myself, Balamw, HH, EricNau, RJS OllyW and 840quadra are very active. It is true that moderating takes time out of our posting but speaking for myself I post quite a bit in the forums. I also see Balamw and the other moderators participating in the forums.


As for your assessment that there was more of a community back in the day. In sense that occurs when there is much less population. Consider living in a town with a couple of thousand people vs. a city with hundreds of thousands. People practically knows everyone in the town but in cities there's pockets of close knit communities but not everyone knows everybody.

Similarly when MR was smaller it everyone knew everyone but as the site grew the dynamics changed a bit, including rules and oversight.

I'd also state that you get out of MacRumors what you put in. You can either help foster the community spirit or you can detract from it.
 
maflynn said:
I also see Balamw and the other moderators participating in the forums.
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For the record, I maintain a ~5 post per day average outside "the back rooms" and just passed 14,000 posts this week.

I participate in the threads that interest me or where I can contribute, but as the site has grown there are more and more threads many of which are simply things I know nothing about or simply am not interested in.

B
 
balamw said:
For the record, I maintain a ~5 post per day average outside "the back rooms" and just passed 14,000 posts this week.
B
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I'm on the 13 post per day average. I like to interact with folks in the MBP, apps and OSX forums, along with the digital photography. There's so much diversity here at MR, that you can find some niches that really pique your interests
 
rdowns said:
MR had an awesome sense of community at one time. Members, mods and admins were all active participants. There was much less need for moderation as mods were active participants and were able to deal with rule infractions in a friendly way within threads. Today, the mods and admins function as little more than nanny state policeman and contribute very little in posting. IMO, some of them are too disconnected from the "community" to effectively moderate it. It's likely your only interaction with them is by personal messages sent about your violating a rule.
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I'm just under 4 posts/day average and just over 11K posts. Nowadays I tend to concentrate on the iPhone/iPad Programming forum, since that's where I think I can be of the greatest assistance lately. I guess that makes me an inactive participant and another one of the disconnected mods.

As for MR, I definitely think it's a case of "you get out what you put in".
 
rdowns said:
Really? You've been here a whole month and you think you know what this place was like before "all the riffraff got in"?

MR had an awesome sense of community at one time. Members, mods and admins were all active participants. There was much less need for moderation as mods were active participants and were able to deal with rule infractions in a friendly way within threads. Today, the mods and admins function as little more than nanny state policeman and contribute very little in posting. IMO, some of them are too disconnected from the "community" to effectively moderate it. It's likely your only interaction with them is by personal messages sent about your violating a rule.

In addition, many, many, many long-time forum members have left over the sites' degradation of community and heavy handed moderation. Couple that with the influx of people and this place isn't even close to what it once was.
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This will often be the case with any Internet forum which is growing. Your description of alienation between mods and members, and also in between members, resembles what I have seen on other websites. I assumed it was similar here, except that these forums might have grown more rapidly than others, making the contrast become more clear.

I have been reading here a little longer than my profile suggests, and I'm not a freshman on the Internet. I haven't seen with my own eyes how this site changed, but I can make a qualified guess. Something similar happened with the imageboard 4chan some years ago.
 
shinobi-81 said:
I have been reading here a little longer than my profile suggests, and I'm not a freshman on the Internet. I haven't seen with my own eyes how this site changed, but I can make a qualified guess. Something similar happened with the imageboard 4chan some years ago.
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If you're actually comfortable comparing this place to 4chan you really haven't paid as close attention as you seem to be implying.
 
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