4 ms·

Maybe they have reason to be grumpy and closed-minded, such as sifting through joke edits all day.

zandorg 17y ago
That's the myth, as it is in publishing. On the one hand, they say a novel is 'written in crayon'. On the other hand, with a well-crafted novel that they can't sell, what is the excuse there? Simple, they just don't say it in public. This is the same with Wikipedia: Perfectly reasonable edits that are flamed down with arbitrary rules, with the public excuse, again: 'Written in crayon'.
xsmasher 17y ago
Agreed. I worked helpdesk for a few semesters in college. The first semester, I had a great time showing off, helping people format their floppies add page numbers to their term papers. The second semester, I got tired of the repitition and started to want for more challenging questions. By the third and fourth semesters, I couldn't understand how humanity survives when everyone is so universally stupid. Nothing about the job had changed, but I began to realize that there can be no "forward progress" because a new batch of (understandably) ignorant freshmen appears every term. I'd imagine the same jaded bitterness creeps into any situation where the senior users act as a bulwark against a constant stream of newbies. How can you prevent "Forum fatigue" from setting in?
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  How can you prevent "Forum fatigue" from setting in? The same way you prevent burnout in any other endeavor. You must learn to enjoy the process as much as the result. You take up teaching because you enjoy explaining things to curious but ignorant people, not because you're hopeful that one day your job will be finished because everyone will know everything. A lot of the enjoyment comes from theme-and-variations. How many ways can you find to explain the same thing? Which way will work best, given the nature of the questioner in front of you? It's like music: You will play "the same piece" thousands of times, and yet each playing will be subtly different, and those differences are what keep it interesting.

That's the myth, as it is in publishing. On the one hand, they say a novel is 'written in crayon'. On the other hand, with a well-crafted novel that they can't sell, what is the excuse there? Simple, they just don't say it in public. This is the same with Wikipedia: Perfectly reasonable edits that are flamed down with arbitrary rules, with the public excuse, again: 'Written in crayon'.

xsmasher 17y ago

Agreed. I worked helpdesk for a few semesters in college. The first semester, I had a great time showing off, helping people format their floppies add page numbers to their term papers. The second semester, I got tired of the repitition and started to want for more challenging questions. By the third and fourth semesters, I couldn't understand how humanity survives when everyone is so universally stupid. Nothing about the job had changed, but I began to realize that there can be no "forward progress" because a new batch of (understandably) ignorant freshmen appears every term. I'd imagine the same jaded bitterness creeps into any situation where the senior users act as a bulwark against a constant stream of newbies. How can you prevent "Forum fatigue" from setting in?

mechanical_fish 17y ago
How can you prevent "Forum fatigue" from setting in? The same way you prevent burnout in any other endeavor. You must learn to enjoy the process as much as the result. You take up teaching because you enjoy explaining things to curious but ignorant people, not because you're hopeful that one day your job will be finished because everyone will know everything. A lot of the enjoyment comes from theme-and-variations. How many ways can you find to explain the same thing? Which way will work best, given the nature of the questioner in front of you? It's like music: You will play "the same piece" thousands of times, and yet each playing will be subtly different, and those differences are what keep it interesting.