Get to level 25 before posting/ asking questions on forums..Follow

Eh, setting a level requirement on asking questions isn't really a good idea. There is alot of information that isn't stored in stickies or manuals that can still be wanted/needed by even experienced players. Granted, certain questions would be classified as a Crime against Humanity, but not all are.

I myself posted a question in the Priest forums a while back, when my priest was merely level 21. I had planned to PvP a bit at 29 to gain the PvP items and the Trinket, and couldn't find decisive information on a healer's build nor itemization. I backed my post up with several choice builds I had made myself, my reasoning, and the thoughts I had made on +healing vs Intellect at that level and so on and so forth. It was well received, and should I see a similar post here on these boards, I would'nt mind even a little bit.

Alot of posts are good, well thought out, researched posts. And level isn't a requirement for any of the above.

So you are saying "Read the sticky or the OSite before posting"?

Ahh, the roller coaster...

See, for some time I thought the posters here were overly harsh to people asking certain questions. Then I started to see what they meant about the same dumbass questions being asked over and over again. Now I'm sort of getting back to the notion that yes, there are some dumbass questions asked repeatedly and yes, sometimes the people asking the questions need a kick in their dumb *** to knock some sense into them, but then...well, allow me to illustrate.

Back when I used to play FFXI, my gf expressed an interest in playing. She's not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination...at all. She just wanted to give it a go because it was one of my hobbies and she wanted to understand it a bit better. I geared up one of my alts and spent time with her teaching her how to play as she went. She would get so happy when she killed a mob or otherwise accomplished something most experienced gamers would consider trivial. I thought it was cute...I mean, who doesn't like to see their significant other enjoying themselves? Throughout the entire process of teaching her how to play, I made a point of not being critical of her mistakes. It was supposed to be fun. Consequently, I came to dread when she leveled to the point that grouping would be the only way to gain reasonable xp.

That day came, and for her first couple of parties I sat with her coaching her along so that she could make a reasonable contribution and hopefully avoid the ire of some of the elitists running through the lowbie grouping area on their 7th job. She had a very good time, and a couple of days later she decided to log on and try to get a group while I was at work. I came home minutes after she logged off and she was almost in tears because of the way she had been treated in the party. She had made a number of mistakes, and I understand fully how frustrating it is if you're even a semi-skilled player and someone in your group makes mistakes that grinds your progress to a halt. Nevertheless, these people had said some pretty cruel things to her and she more or less stopped playing the game.

Keep in mind, a big part of the thrill she got out of the game was from chatting with random people she came across in towns and the starter leveling areas. She was always very friendly and actually wound up making a number of friends over the course of the couple of weeks she played before she started grouping.

She went from very much enjoying the game and really enjoying herself to feeling so shamed and disappointed that she never wanted to play again. She joined the group knowing that she wasn't a strong player but she was quite serious about wanting to do her part in the group. She already felt terribly when she realized she had made a mistake that created downtime for the party.

Ya, those of us who have been around teh intarwebz for a while know that if you don't grow a bit of a thick skin, you don't get much enjoyment out of any online interaction. But let's set aside the conventions we've come to accept as just part of the wild, wild intarweb. A kind, sensitive human being had a form of entertainment that she truly enjoyed ruined for her by a bunch of cruel, thoughtless, elitist pricks. Emboldened by the safety that comes from interacting with people hundreds of miles away, comments like, "you're ******* stupid" and "you have no business playing this game"...inexcusable, especially in a lowbie area.

So why the drawn out QQ story for my gf? Because it illustrates the point that just because not everyone does things the "right" way straight out of the gates doesn't mean they're stupid, thoughtless, lazy, or otherwise lacking. Honestly, if you truly believe that shaming and invalidating people for posting relatively inoccuous questions is the right way to go, you might want to ask yourself what you are missing in your life that compels you to try and take people down a notch whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Maybe I had a set of blinders on when I started posting here, but I haven't really noticed the clique that haunts this sub-forum until recently.

I hope you're proud of yourselves. Creating elitist rules and enforcing them while ever so subtly stroking your e-peens is really the path to enlightenment. Feeling powerful and important at the expense of other people is the most noble of pursuits, I suppose.

Sweet, merciful grumble-cakes, North. I was just about to post basically the same thing and you've beaten me to it!

I agree that being an ***-wad to just anyone is stupid. There are some great debates and valid new-player questions that come out on this forum. But when people keep coming back with "H0w Do get petz?? I want a lvl 40 panda to kIll wt!!! Lawwlll!!!!" Or, perhaps, just "hey, everyone. I'm lazy. Build my character for me" ....

Well, do we really want to say, "Ahh, I see the mistake, old chap. There is actually information about this already - which you already know, since you know enough to ask - and it's all contained in a large, bold note at the top of the forum, which you seem to have missed. By accident, I'm sure. I don't mean to suggest that you're lazy in any way because that would be rude. Ought you to, perhap, take a gander at said data and see for yourself?.... When you're ready?.... Unless.. You'd much rather stay here and make us do your work?... Oh, ok, sir. I'll go do that for you. May I do your homework for school while I'm at it?"


I wish every new question asker did this. I wouldn't mind it in the slightest. Sure, bring questions about talents and character building but put thought into it yourself before posting. We're not lackeys (apart from North's minions, of course) and we want to encourage people to think about the game. Rather than continue to play as mindless "I R Huntar!!kekekeke" drones all their lives.

And I completely agree with North's response about the clique statement. I mean, come on, Aurelius. Are you freaking serious? There just might be cases where North, skribs or Caldone, etc, have agreed with something I've said. But I'm willing to bet that they don't see my avatar and just blindly think, "Wow! I'm sure to agree with everything in this, cause it's Smallsword." And I sure as all sticky f*ck won't smile and nod at them, for who they are, even if they post retarded zombie slurry. If you disagree, you disagree. This is not some tween movie like Bratz with pink skirts, a campus **** and dark whispers about bloody murder and stealing the recently-deceased's clothes and accessories.

There has been a real "holier than thou" attitude from you, Aurelius and it is a big dump of hypocrisy. Just because some posters here (strongly) encourage the use of individual thought and research and vehemently discourage brainless hick-spawn from posting again before they actually think things through a bit, it doesn't make them the bane of all things bright, lovely and holy. And it certainly doesn't make anyone else more pure. So, you want to stop people from patronising dipsh*ts by spending your time patronising them. That's like a father using the "I'm going to sleep with your girlfriend to show you why having sex with her at your young age is wrong" school of applied parenting.

(edit: spelling)

Edited, Oct 26th 2007 8:32am by Smallsword

I disagree with the main point of the thread, and feel free to smack me down as a result.

If a level 25 player comes in here asking stupid questions, they've at least stumbled in the right direction--better to end up here than the "official" WoW hunter forums, where misinformation and even dumber posts abound.

It's easy enough to refer someone to a sticky. You've wasted the time to read their question; don't waste any more than you have to responding (if at all). A simple "Please read the sticky at the top of this forum" will suffice. If they don't even deserve that response, don't respond; they'll figure it out.

And to that point, no one is obligated to read every thread on this forum, and I'm sure the posters that are the most frustrated with newb threads can pick them out from the topic title without even trying. Just don't read it; save yourself a headache and an extra thirty seconds.

I'd prefer the dumb question askers to end up here--and perhaps gain some knowledge by being referred to the sticky (or getting frustrated with the lack of responses to their thread that they search the forums themselves)--than to wittle their way to 70 never knowing anything. Case in point: I ran heroic Mechanar yesterday with a warlock who knew NOTHING about how to play her class. And she was running HEROICS! Maybe she should have started asking questions when she was 25.

My point is this: Let them post their dumb questions. You know how to spot them; don't read them. If you do, you don't have to respond, or you can simply refer them to the sticky.

That was taken from the first paragraph in my original response to this thread. Are you sure you didn't just skim my post to a get the basic gist of what I was saying and ignore the details?

As for the, "There is no clique," response, you all could well be right, but take a look at the flow of so many of the posts here and tell me it's unreasonable to come to the conclusion that there's a bit of a clique at play:

OP: <question>

North/Caldone/Skribs/et al: <scathing rebuff>

North/Caldone/Skribs: "Harr harrr harr that was such a brilliant rebuff. You're so evil."

North/Caldone/Skribs: "Yes, my sheer evilness knows no bounds."

North/Caldone/Skribs: "Your evilness inspires me. Will you take me to the evil temple and teach me your ways?"

And on and on and on. Basically, anyone posting a question one of them doesn't approve of is shamed into submission and then has their thread derailed with a bunch of repetetive, droll nonsense that might be amusing if it wasn't done at the expense of someone else.

The latest was the post from the person wanting to know how to teach their pet shadow meld. If they were bombing around Darkshore and saw someone with a stealthed pet and then asked in /1 how to get it, there are enough smacktards who play that having someone say it's a quest isn't unheard of. Or it could have been someone with the ghost saber who just didn't give them enough information. The first response in that thread (sending them to Thunder Bluff) believe it or not, would be entirely plausible to someone new to the game. If they had leveled a Druid up to 10 prior to this, talking to them about how the N.Elves and Tauren had forged an Alliance would make absolute sense, because at level 10 every Druid gets a spell that teleports them to Moonglade where...*gasp*...N.Elves and Tauren are getting along.

Not only that, out of all of the Horde starting areas, Mulgore is the easiest to get to with little/no opposition from opposing faction NPCs. (I just rolled a Tauren rawrkitty a couple of weeks ago.) So you get someone who departs Astranaar for a jaunt across the Barrens, down past Camp Taurache (sp?) and into Mulgore. Would take what...maybe 20-30 minutes on foot? Then how long might they run around Thunder Bluff looking for the N.Elf NPC?

In other words, the response was false, but very easy for a newer player to not pick up on it. I would hope that not everyone here is so narrow as to think that just because it would seem ludicrous to them, when you start with a semi-plausible story, throw in some NPC names for good measure, and exclude the truly outrageous components that would make it easily identifiable by anyone as crap, you're being an @#%^. You're being selfish. You're trying to be funny and impress your friends and you don't really give a @#%^ about how it impacts the person who asked the question in the first place.



Nobody likes being accused to being a member of a clique. My experience in the school environment, in the work environment as a manager, and as a volunteer crisis counsellor is that nobody who is part of a clique ever acknowledges it because they don't see it that way. It's the people outside that say, "Woah...could ya'll stroke each other a little more at our expense, please?" The clique invariably denies any of it. They're comfortable in their clique. They're happy in a mutually supportive environment and running with some folks that support them in the exclusive and/or poor treatment of others makes them feel powerful.

That's basically what a clique is. An exclusive group of people that refuse to accept the presence of others unless those others meet subjective and often unrealistic criteria. Those who don't meet that criteria are not only excluded, but frequently treated very poorly. Does that sound familiar to you?

Some of the people in this forum are out of control. My hope would be they take a moment to evaluate some of their responses to others honestly and without being defensive about it. Moderate your own contributions and slow the @#%^ down with the responses that scream louder than anything, "HAHHA!! We're cool and you're not!"


Edited, Oct 26th 2007 8:57am by AureliusSir

Well, tkasomething manages without having to mock and belittle anyone who asks a question that's already been answered, or asks about gear in the regular instead of the gear channel, etc. But since it isn't part of a full WoW site, its situation is a bit different.

Let me make an analogy to the way people like you respond to stupid questions: there's another board I read in which people posting stupid stuff get set upon like hyenas to zebras. Such that when someone makes a dumb post, someone may comment "oh great, another zebra". And they get torn to shreds.

Except that what counts as 'dumb' on that forum is stuff that is *blatantly* offensive bullsh*t. Here it's as simple as posting a question whose answer might be buried on page 5 of the outdated, disorganized sticky thread.

There's a big difference between tolerating questions from newbies and pointing them to the answer, or answering their question, and insulting and mocking them. You, and other people, I think have made the tone of this forum a somewhat nasty and cruel one. And I don't think that keeping things kind and civil would make this forum descend into a morass of idiocy.

I'm not trying to say we should have any rules or regulations. But I think that probably is how it now seems from an outside point of view.


Edited, Oct 26th 2007 11:56am by seroster

c wut I did thar?

Right back at ya, North. Otherwise, don't try to hold me accountable to a standard of behavior that you ignore in your interaction with others.

My general approach to new posters asking questions that could be answered with minimal research is to answer it if I know the info off the top of my head, and then refer them to the new sticky. Which is finished and really needs to be redone and stickied. Mulgrin, I've seen you posting, where's that at?

I think we can be a bit too extreme sometimes. My rule is to answer them but also make sure it's clear that they should have checked the sticky. Then if they get mad in the second post they are fair game.

2 Things

Aurelius...shut up, your all too evident holier than thou attitude is both self serving and time wasting. Lead by example, not by preaching your psycho babble. We all know how to interact with human beings, some of us are just nicer than others, but HUMAN interaction is quite different than INTERNET interaction. Forums are not happy places filled with cotton candy and bubble gum, they are fountains of knowledge that happen to be supplied by people who have played the game long enough, read enough information or asked enough questions to be educated and only ask that people read the information and ask valid questions. Other than that, we're intolerant human beings who don't like wasting time answering questions or in my case pretending to care (i've been on these forums for about 2.5 years now and only have about 180 posts at this point), but lately my desire to help people has taken on more of a "cruel to be kind" flavor and I have therefore been more inclined to answer stupid questions with equally stupid and or cruel answers. I'll admit I can be a jerk, but whatever you do, no NOT come in here pretending to have the authority to say how people can or cannot speak or act. You are not God, you are not the devil, you are not our parent or our guardian OR our mentor. Say what you want, no one has the right to say it right or wrong.

Second, READ THE STICKY!!!! and filter through all the posts that have been de-railed or are now otherwise meaningless...such as this one, sadly, because of one or more people being totally up in arms about something that they know damn good and well is a worthwhile point, but don't like the way the poor, innocent, delicate, sweet, (insert nauseating adjective) Newbs/Noobs are being treated.



Edited, Oct 26th 2007 1:21pm by Katchii

I fully agree, North. I fully agree that people who spew drivel in a posting pane and then expect to be taken seriously need a bit of a wakeup call. You can't tell me that every poster who asks a question here demonstrates only minimal skill/effort in the written literacy department. It's the overly harsh responses to people who post highly readable questions who are mistreated simply because someone felt like answering the questions was beneath them.



Maybe things work differently in the UK, North. Here in North America, progressive groups are trying to pull people out of manuals and directories and reinforcing respectful information by saying basically, "If you have a question, please don't hesitate to ask." Sure, some people still ride their dinosaurs to work and fill out invoices on stone tablets, but the social convention of handing people a mammoth stack of reading materials and treating them like a scrub until they've memorized them all just doesn't work. It's being phased out. On the level of cognitive/social psychology is the understanding that just because something has "always been done" a certain way, doesn't immediately justify that way is right or effective.



The question becomes, North, who are you to define these requirements? Who is anyone else to? If Allakhazam, Defender of Justice, doesn't come down with an edict that says so, it's not your place to be creating requirements of anyone.

I assume your response to that will be to label me a hypicrite. Something along the lines of, "Aren't you trying to create your own set of requirements?" If you read closely, you'll notice that I've said sometimes being a bit harsh with people is the only way to bring them around. You'll also notice I've said that lately I've seen it spiral out of control, which is what often happens when people see certain behaviors are now socially acceptable but don't quite grasp the boundaries of those behaviors yet.



There's an incredibly distinct line between honest criticism and being a grade A asshat. That's my entire point.



Then no, your standards of behavior are not quite high. They're subjective. Your self respect is not as high as you might want it to be, or you wouldn't create such a negative perception of yourself in these forums. You boast of your reputation as an *******...that's not self respect. That's telling people you're something socially unacceptable and proud of it. There's no respect for yourself in any of that.



Wow...so now not only are they required to read the sticky before they post in order to avoid your wrath (and the wrath of others), now they're expected to know and observe the unwritten rules. Try to be a bit more realistic in your expecations, please.



If the sticky were more user friendly, it would be realistic to carry a reasonable expectation that folks would read it. For most people, clicking on a sticky with no useful index and then having to read through pages upon pages of "stuff" if they have any hope of finding an answer to their question is not realistic. It's not by any stretch of the imagination unrealistic to refer them to the sticky, but the venemous tripe could be left out in a lot of cases.

Having said that, it says very close to the top of the sticky that certain questions will be met with nastiness. "What is the best <anything>", "What is a good pet?" etc. are not kosher questions to ask. There are a lot of questions asked here that fall well outside those basic guidelines, however, that certain people have given themselves liberty to rip apart. That is what I take issue with.



And your, "These are the reasons why it's ok for me to be a prick" excuses are getting old. So where does that leave us?



And why is that, North? What is it about making feel bad that is so appealing to you? Is it because you don't feel all that great about yourself so bringing people down to your level in your own eyes makes you feel less alienated? Is it because you feel a lack of control and mastery over yourself in everyday life that you chose to compensate by finding a sense of power here?

My sense is that your cruel response to others has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with you.



Those who annoy you...deserve your wrath...why? Because you're perfect? Because you like and fully expected to be treated like **** by the people you annoy? If you really did, you wouldn't be defending yourself to me. You'd be thriving on my criticism of some of the behavior in this forum. You'd be begging for more. But you're not. You're basically saying, "This is how I do things, and if you don't like it sod off." You're maintaining a double standard, North. It's ok for you to be cruel and disrespectful to people who annoy you based on your criteria of annoying, but something about you entitles you to exemption from your own standards?

I'd like to clarify...I'm not singling you out. I'm responding to what you're posting. Any of the others who have repeatedly treated newcomers poorly would be receiving similar responses. My purpose is not to cut you down, but to examine the logic behind your decisions, and there doesn't seem to be very much reason at all to why you do what you do. At least, nothing I'd expect you'd be proud to admit.

Why not? I did. The sticky STILL helps me even to this day. Chock full of good stuff. If you're in a rush for an answer, Google it. It'll be out there someplace.



That's something that is being addressed right now. The old sticky is still friendly enough to be understood by anyone with a 4th grade education. You just have to invest time to read it and understand it. That is what many of the 'clique' are asking for, sometimes in abrasive terms, and I can understand the request. Like Caldone, I hung out for a while and then decided to hop in.

So, rather than slap everyone that might be in what you are calling a clique, which gets you nothing but grief, let people be and post how they will and guide those that you feel are worth it yourself. They will look up to you and get the answers they need. They will probably not like other posters but that's what those posters want, not to be liked by those people. Live and let live and get on with the task of being a contributing member of the forum.

Again, why are people so sensitive anymore? Do you really need to QQ everytime someone posts something you view as negative Aurelius? I come here and get a laugh once in awhile. Most flaming posts by these guys are at least well written and more often than not point the OP to go to a specific place to find the information. Do they feel a wee bit stupid after a verbal beatdown? Probably, but I bet they also learn to do a little research before they blindly post after that.