The One and Only Aurelius wrote:
Not to invalidate the work of other posters, but Bard's thread has more potential to provide information that will answer questions. There are dozens/hundreds of potential hardware combinations. We've already tried the, "ask your questions here and we'll try to help" route and it helps only a bit. And when those kinds of threads reach a certain critical mass, people stop posting their questions in them and instead start filling up the first page of the thread list with new threads. If people are filling out Bardalicious' spreadsheet and looking at the results, they can figure out on their own what they can expect their hardware to achieve in terms of performance, and if they have an upgrade in mind they can look at what other people using that hardware are seeing in terms of results.
I don't really think we need a thread teaching people how not to be technologically illiterate in the 21st century. (Okay, maybe we do, but not in the XIV boards). I think we just need a reliable place we can direct people to to do their own research and decide for themselves. Mikhalia is a far more patient person than I, but from my point of view I'm tired of answering questions on the issue. It's not that I don't want to answer them and/or be helpful, it's that answering for one person still leaves (apparently) hundreds who still can't think for themselves and arrive at their own conclusions.
I started doing that way back in the first benchmark thread, around the end of page three. I found that maintaining it was too much work, but agree that if people enter their own information, if would be a lot easier (or if one or two people want to volunteer to skim the 10~ page long benchmark thread and put data in; not it.
I do think you rely too much on someone's ability to think for themselves based on a spreadsheet compared to telling them EXACTLY what to get. Because no matter how many times I repeat myself, "GTX200/400, Radeon 5700/5800/5900 or don't even try to play it", there're still people posting "Should I buy this computer?", followed by tech specs that indicate none of those GPUs.
I'm usually as nice as I can be about repeating myself over and over.
I do think that with that type of person, telling them exactly what to buy is likely to accomplish more than giving them a bunch of data and letting them try to decipher it. Not that such data can't hurt for comparison, but sometimes you just need to tell someone "Do this and it will work, do something else and it will not work."
The One and Only Aurelius wrote:
This is an example of what I think would be the greatest benefit. Take a compilation of benchmark scores like that, toss in a blurb about how RAM/OS might impact scores, and let people fend for themselves. If we get in the habit of holding hands now, we're going to be doing it for months and months to come.
Eh, I'm just too damn helpful when it comes to this sort of thing; I suppose that's why I've pretty much taken it upon myself to help just about everyone who are all asking the same questions.
It should be noted out that bluegartr's mods have a lot less tolerance for dumb questions. They're not quite as stringent as somethingawful forums, but it's pretty obvious that BG is a lot more likely to tell you to **** off for responding to a thread (or starting a new one) with a question that is answered in the OP or a sticky.
There's a reason that a lot of people here consider them to be "elitist", it's because they're right, and they're mean about it if you try to agrue with them.
Comparatively, there's no real discouragement around here against people who ask questions that have already been answered. There are a couple forum regulars who will tell the person who asked a dumb question that their question has already been answered, but that usually results in something along the lines of "Well can you repeat it for me because I CBA to find it and need it spelled out for me". The kneejerk reaction at that point is to get annoyed with them because eventually you get tired of repeating yourself, and then they just get all indignant with you... yeah.
Edited, Jul 4th 2010 8:28pm by Mikhalia