I think the bottom line of this whole thing is simple: you need to have and maintain a middle ground.
While it is good to keep an open mind for new influences and such it's not a good thing when those influences will start having a bad effect on the forum. For example... snowflakes who get plain out offended and who will start a tantrum when you dare tell them in public that they're wrong about something or worse: when they're sharing bad and/or potentially dangerous advice and get called out for it. Many veterans will call something stupid when it actually is stupid, however... you're not playing the man but you're questioning the things they do.
Nothing wrong with that.
But as always it's also important that you don't allow this directness to escalate either. While there's nothing wrong with simply stating that some action was plain out stupid there's also this thing as context. When someone shares bad advice while also making it look like they really know what they're talking about then yah, I'm going to cut it down and be direct and straight to the point: don't be stupid. However, when it involves a newbie who is obviously trying but having issues... then that's a whole different ballgame. Then I won't start by stating that what they did was stupid, but I'll word it in the likes of "I think you made a mistake there... see... <insert reasoning & explanation here>".
Which I think is a middle ground to uphold. There's nothing wrong with change. Heck... I lived the days where the mods here were really keen on fixing peoples messages with regards to (large) grammar issues as well as formatting. You know... files,
I enjoyed those times, but then again I was a nitpick myself anyway, but I'm also not sad to see it end either because it makes the forum less intimidating for newbies, at least that's my impression on that.
You can't stop change, but you can help preserve the quality of the community you're currently in, that's my take on this thread.
And things could always be worse...
Small offtopic comment, hope you guys don't mind... In short: I enjoy Windows for what it is on the client side and I've also learned a lot about it over the years in both usage and administration; it's far more indepth than many realize. And when I enjoy something I also flock towards communities a little bit. Yah... As much as I enjoy Windows and respect the official communities I also can't help crinch at the way things work over there. It's "RTFM" taken to whole new levels...
The most "awarded" (yech!) people over there hardly do anything else but refer people to URL's: articles in Microsoft's knowledgebase. Worse yet: in many cases (not all!) those articles don't even explain the question which the OP was asking about but... the global moderators seem to need closure so they're often picked as the best answer anyway "because?".
I've been active there every once in a while and I gained most "decorations" by simply rebutting. Totally ignoring the "experts" and instead of sharing URLs I actually started explaining stuff. It was fun, but that fun doesn't last very long like that, it got tedious and I felt that I was surrounded by a bunch of "expertly morons" (= strictly personal take on that). How much of an expert are you if you can't even verify that the knowledgebase article you're referring someone to actually covers the thing they're asking about?
I think that when we reach that level of ignorance over here then things are really going to pot. But before that I think we're doing just fine over here. Most people are helpfull, even towards people who seem to be obsessed with asking over reading, and well... I like it a lot more this way.
As some others above me have also said: you can always ignore a thread and just hop onto the next one.
While it is good to keep an open mind for new influences and such it's not a good thing when those influences will start having a bad effect on the forum. For example... snowflakes who get plain out offended and who will start a tantrum when you dare tell them in public that they're wrong about something or worse: when they're sharing bad and/or potentially dangerous advice and get called out for it. Many veterans will call something stupid when it actually is stupid, however... you're not playing the man but you're questioning the things they do.
Nothing wrong with that.
But as always it's also important that you don't allow this directness to escalate either. While there's nothing wrong with simply stating that some action was plain out stupid there's also this thing as context. When someone shares bad advice while also making it look like they really know what they're talking about then yah, I'm going to cut it down and be direct and straight to the point: don't be stupid. However, when it involves a newbie who is obviously trying but having issues... then that's a whole different ballgame. Then I won't start by stating that what they did was stupid, but I'll word it in the likes of "I think you made a mistake there... see... <insert reasoning & explanation here>".
Which I think is a middle ground to uphold. There's nothing wrong with change. Heck... I lived the days where the mods here were really keen on fixing peoples messages with regards to (large) grammar issues as well as formatting. You know... files,
commands
and such. Don't use a command section to indicate a file, otherwise it'll get fixed.I enjoyed those times, but then again I was a nitpick myself anyway, but I'm also not sad to see it end either because it makes the forum less intimidating for newbies, at least that's my impression on that.
You can't stop change, but you can help preserve the quality of the community you're currently in, that's my take on this thread.
And things could always be worse...
Small offtopic comment, hope you guys don't mind... In short: I enjoy Windows for what it is on the client side and I've also learned a lot about it over the years in both usage and administration; it's far more indepth than many realize. And when I enjoy something I also flock towards communities a little bit. Yah... As much as I enjoy Windows and respect the official communities I also can't help crinch at the way things work over there. It's "RTFM" taken to whole new levels...
The most "awarded" (yech!) people over there hardly do anything else but refer people to URL's: articles in Microsoft's knowledgebase. Worse yet: in many cases (not all!) those articles don't even explain the question which the OP was asking about but... the global moderators seem to need closure so they're often picked as the best answer anyway "because?".
I've been active there every once in a while and I gained most "decorations" by simply rebutting. Totally ignoring the "experts" and instead of sharing URLs I actually started explaining stuff. It was fun, but that fun doesn't last very long like that, it got tedious and I felt that I was surrounded by a bunch of "expertly morons" (= strictly personal take on that). How much of an expert are you if you can't even verify that the knowledgebase article you're referring someone to actually covers the thing they're asking about?
I think that when we reach that level of ignorance over here then things are really going to pot. But before that I think we're doing just fine over here. Most people are helpfull, even towards people who seem to be obsessed with asking over reading, and well... I like it a lot more this way.
As some others above me have also said: you can always ignore a thread and just hop onto the next one.