Okay, I just finished reading the "Unidentified eel" thread and wanted to make some comments, but thought they were important enough to pull them out in their own thread. Especially because this is much more general than that single issue. The tang police also come to mind when I think about this issue.
For those not familiar, the thread in question starts with a poster who has collected some eels while sport fishing, completely legally, that are normally used for bait. He puts them in his aquarium and is looking for care information, and positive ID.
The first few posts in his thread are flames. Against him. The posters who flamed him continued to do so, and essentially turned his thread into a flame war with little or no value to the hobby. I know this is an internet forum, but let's think about the repercussions of these actions.
I consider myself a good hobbyist, and one of the things I do frequently is recommend forums (usually RC) to new hobbyists. Many times, I have had the person say: "Oh, I posted there once and they are mean!" This is not at all uncommon, and I think it's very sad.
New hobbyists make mistakes. If you sat down and thought about all the bad advice you have gotten from your LFS over the years, you'd realize also that it's not always their fault. Even cases where the culprit is the poster aren't going to be mended with insults. I have yet to see an argument won because someone called their opponent an idiot so many times that he finally said "Oh, this guy says I am idiot, and he said it 50 times so it must be right!" It really doesn't work that way.
If someone comes here with a question, even the stupidest, most n00bsauce question, it shows that they have the initiative to learn about this hobby. That effort right there shows that they care enough to be a responsible reefer. They are trying, even if it's completely misguided. It is your responsibility to help them see the proper course in a supportive manner not an aggressive one that pushes them back to the sources of bad advice that caused their mistakes in the first place. When you flame someone off the forums, they often don't come back. The end result of this is more dead fish and corals, because that person generally goes back to the LFS, which promptly recommends that nice flowerpot coral when he hears them grumbling about jerks on the forums.
I have long been of the opinion that the single thing that has caused the most damage to the environmental lobby in this country is rabidly aggressive environmentalists. It's sad to see the same effect here in this microcosm.
Instead of seeing red when you see 5 tangs in a 29 gallon, realize that you just stepped into a competition. You are competing with a salesman somewhere that sold those 5 tangs (and we all know probably more) to that beginner hobbyist. That salesman used many slick tactics, and probably a little flattery, while ensuring the hobbyist that it was totally fine to stock his tank like that. After having been sold something by someone who earned his respect, and told him he could do it, someone who makes a living selling fish (conflict of interest is obvious here to an experienced hobbyist, but a lot of people consider that the seller would know more than a random internet guy, who is also anonymous.), the hobbyist then comes to the forum for advice.
Enter you, who does the internet equivalent of the yosemite sam hop, firing off your six guns, screaming in all caps that you know it all, and someone PLEASE OH PLEASE THINK ABOUT TEH SEA KITTENZ!!!!!!ZOMG!!1!!!one.
Do you really think you will win that competition? Especially when they do a search on your handle and up comes your thread with the title: "OMG RTN ALL MY CORALS ARE ASPLODIFYING HAAAALP!" comes up? Probably not. The end result is that the person will write the forums off, and instead of helping someone become a responsible hobbyist who came to the forums for help, you cast a bad light on the forums and made them think the LFS knows more than forum posters.
The only way you are going to convince the person that the forums are a better source of info than the LFS is by being more professional than the LFS salesman. With a large number of people, this is ALREADY an uphill battle, because the forums are on the internet, and made up of random people, while the guy in the store is a "professional" who spends his entire day taking care of fish. Additionally, people HATE to admit they are wrong, especially when they have spent money and essentially paid someone for advice. It's very likely that you may have a difficult time convincing someone to take something they paid $50 for back to a store that often will only give fractional credit. Often the person will disagree simply because they have spent so much money and don't want to feel like they made a bad investment. Of course we all know, they spent money on a fish tank and investment is not exactly the word to use to describe their actions, but we have to break it to them gently.
If you really cared about the fish, you would pick up a book on rhetoric, and carefully consider how you should explain the inappropriateness of 5 tangs in a 29 gallon. You could provide links, there are lots of sources of info. You could recommend a better source of info, a good book maybe. You could give personal accounts of your mistakes and how you learned from them. You could make up a cheer and have your local cheer squad deliver it on youtube, maybe: "Our tangs swim like boomerangs!" All of these might be likely to convince them of their folly.
The one thing that won't convince anyone to change their behavior is an insult.
Posters also need to think about the forum as a high quality source of information. I have betrayed throughout this post my personal belief that RC is a better source of information than an LFS, but this is not always the case. In the eel thread, the usability of a very valid post was destroyed by the amount of people who posted flames and arguments not related to the initial post. People continued to do so even after the initial poster asked them to stop, and to answer his original question and nothing else. Realize, you aren't going to win every argument, and sometimes you might even be wrong. Knowing when to shut up and allow a thread to develop into a useful resource of information instead of a flame war is a valuable skill.
I know there are rules on this forum, and enforcement. I'm not a mod, so I don't know all the details, but I do know that you can get away with quite a lot sometimes, on both sides of an argument. This goes beyond that. Instead of thinking to yourself, "how can I flame this idiot without getting a mod's attention?" try asking yourself "How can I appear to be more knowledgeable and more professional than the LFS salesman and convince this guy that he needs to change his practices." If you truly believe that his practices need to change, then you should be able to provide well stated arguments telling him why without insulting him at all.
Changing the focus of your statements will save fish, coral, money, frustration, and someday, just think, you might even be able to use your real name on a forum!
Thanks for reading,
Gusty
For those not familiar, the thread in question starts with a poster who has collected some eels while sport fishing, completely legally, that are normally used for bait. He puts them in his aquarium and is looking for care information, and positive ID.
The first few posts in his thread are flames. Against him. The posters who flamed him continued to do so, and essentially turned his thread into a flame war with little or no value to the hobby. I know this is an internet forum, but let's think about the repercussions of these actions.
I consider myself a good hobbyist, and one of the things I do frequently is recommend forums (usually RC) to new hobbyists. Many times, I have had the person say: "Oh, I posted there once and they are mean!" This is not at all uncommon, and I think it's very sad.
New hobbyists make mistakes. If you sat down and thought about all the bad advice you have gotten from your LFS over the years, you'd realize also that it's not always their fault. Even cases where the culprit is the poster aren't going to be mended with insults. I have yet to see an argument won because someone called their opponent an idiot so many times that he finally said "Oh, this guy says I am idiot, and he said it 50 times so it must be right!" It really doesn't work that way.
If someone comes here with a question, even the stupidest, most n00bsauce question, it shows that they have the initiative to learn about this hobby. That effort right there shows that they care enough to be a responsible reefer. They are trying, even if it's completely misguided. It is your responsibility to help them see the proper course in a supportive manner not an aggressive one that pushes them back to the sources of bad advice that caused their mistakes in the first place. When you flame someone off the forums, they often don't come back. The end result of this is more dead fish and corals, because that person generally goes back to the LFS, which promptly recommends that nice flowerpot coral when he hears them grumbling about jerks on the forums.
I have long been of the opinion that the single thing that has caused the most damage to the environmental lobby in this country is rabidly aggressive environmentalists. It's sad to see the same effect here in this microcosm.
Instead of seeing red when you see 5 tangs in a 29 gallon, realize that you just stepped into a competition. You are competing with a salesman somewhere that sold those 5 tangs (and we all know probably more) to that beginner hobbyist. That salesman used many slick tactics, and probably a little flattery, while ensuring the hobbyist that it was totally fine to stock his tank like that. After having been sold something by someone who earned his respect, and told him he could do it, someone who makes a living selling fish (conflict of interest is obvious here to an experienced hobbyist, but a lot of people consider that the seller would know more than a random internet guy, who is also anonymous.), the hobbyist then comes to the forum for advice.
Enter you, who does the internet equivalent of the yosemite sam hop, firing off your six guns, screaming in all caps that you know it all, and someone PLEASE OH PLEASE THINK ABOUT TEH SEA KITTENZ!!!!!!ZOMG!!1!!!one.
Do you really think you will win that competition? Especially when they do a search on your handle and up comes your thread with the title: "OMG RTN ALL MY CORALS ARE ASPLODIFYING HAAAALP!" comes up? Probably not. The end result is that the person will write the forums off, and instead of helping someone become a responsible hobbyist who came to the forums for help, you cast a bad light on the forums and made them think the LFS knows more than forum posters.
The only way you are going to convince the person that the forums are a better source of info than the LFS is by being more professional than the LFS salesman. With a large number of people, this is ALREADY an uphill battle, because the forums are on the internet, and made up of random people, while the guy in the store is a "professional" who spends his entire day taking care of fish. Additionally, people HATE to admit they are wrong, especially when they have spent money and essentially paid someone for advice. It's very likely that you may have a difficult time convincing someone to take something they paid $50 for back to a store that often will only give fractional credit. Often the person will disagree simply because they have spent so much money and don't want to feel like they made a bad investment. Of course we all know, they spent money on a fish tank and investment is not exactly the word to use to describe their actions, but we have to break it to them gently.
If you really cared about the fish, you would pick up a book on rhetoric, and carefully consider how you should explain the inappropriateness of 5 tangs in a 29 gallon. You could provide links, there are lots of sources of info. You could recommend a better source of info, a good book maybe. You could give personal accounts of your mistakes and how you learned from them. You could make up a cheer and have your local cheer squad deliver it on youtube, maybe: "Our tangs swim like boomerangs!" All of these might be likely to convince them of their folly.
The one thing that won't convince anyone to change their behavior is an insult.
Posters also need to think about the forum as a high quality source of information. I have betrayed throughout this post my personal belief that RC is a better source of information than an LFS, but this is not always the case. In the eel thread, the usability of a very valid post was destroyed by the amount of people who posted flames and arguments not related to the initial post. People continued to do so even after the initial poster asked them to stop, and to answer his original question and nothing else. Realize, you aren't going to win every argument, and sometimes you might even be wrong. Knowing when to shut up and allow a thread to develop into a useful resource of information instead of a flame war is a valuable skill.
I know there are rules on this forum, and enforcement. I'm not a mod, so I don't know all the details, but I do know that you can get away with quite a lot sometimes, on both sides of an argument. This goes beyond that. Instead of thinking to yourself, "how can I flame this idiot without getting a mod's attention?" try asking yourself "How can I appear to be more knowledgeable and more professional than the LFS salesman and convince this guy that he needs to change his practices." If you truly believe that his practices need to change, then you should be able to provide well stated arguments telling him why without insulting him at all.
Changing the focus of your statements will save fish, coral, money, frustration, and someday, just think, you might even be able to use your real name on a forum!
Thanks for reading,
Gusty
