Less People Here?
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@fcarney This forum has been going for years on years now and I think it's doing fine. We tweak things from time to time, but the general impressions from people seem to be very positive, with very few, but extremely vocal exceptions, that can't seem to be pleased no matter what. I'd say Qt has always been fighting an uphill battle. C++ is not the language of choice for UIs on many of the major platforms and number of C++ developers, especially in the ever growing mobile and web spaces is not doing so hot. Add to that the fact that Qt is focusing more and more on some specific segments of the market and recent questionable licensing moves have added to the growing uncertainty about it.
I don't know forum user stats (would be interesting to see actually), but if there's actually any decline I don't think it has anything to do with how the forum carries itself. If you randomly peek profiles of the thousands of users here over the years most of them register, ask a very specific question or two, get answer and never come back or come back to ask another question once in few years. That's just because a lot of the same questions have already been answered multiple times either here or somewhere else and you don't need to register anywhere to find them. So usually people that do register are the ones with a specific unanswered question or those who are in the spot on their path where they don't know how to effectively ask google yet. The people that stay long term stay for the less targeted support I think - help with designs, ongoing learning and yeah, to hang out with like minded people and peek each other's brain on stuff.
Keep in mind that this is not a Qt Company hotline - ask binary question, get yes/no answer, get billed. We're just bunch of random internet people with some Qt experience (or not) talking, helping each other out, sometimes stumbling, having a laugh, getting angry, sad, going off topic etc.
@AnneRanch said in Less People Here?:
I have been kicked out from few for not towing the line.
A few? And yet you still seem to think it's always "their fault". Your mindset is just baffling to me.
Yes, when a forum turns into English lessons and kindergarten rating it all goes down hill fast
Ratings are a way to try to separate helpful and harmful or misinformed advice. This is the internet. We don't know each other so there's no "natural" way to tell who knows their stuff and who's just talking to talk right away. You can't expect someone with a question to hang out for few months just to see who's answer they can trust. This way, when they get conflicting answers they can take a look - a person with couple k of upvotes is more likely to be the right one. Not always of course, but the laws of probability are real. You'd be surprised how many people with no knowledge whatsoever repeat the same mistakes and spread them to others with full authority in their statements, just because they've seen a youtube video somewhere that also got it wrong. It's not a perfect system, as there are no such, but it has been pretty effective over the years and so does its job.
As for language - a lot of us here are not native English speakers and that's perfectly expected and fine. There's also nothing wrong with helping others in that regard. English, like it or not, is THE technical language of a large chunk of the world and certainly in Qt sphere of interest, so getting some tips on it here and there is only a good thing. If you can tip someone on a C++ keyword you can do that with English too. It's all good to know I think.
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@Chris-Kawa said in Less People Here?:
A few? And yet you still seem to think it's always "their fault". Your mindset is just baffling to me.
Allow me to give you ONE example of my mindset.
I got into trouble for not enclosing my code in "quotation marks"
when I pointed out to the administrator that it takes SAME amount of mouse clicks to copy quoted text as unquoted text. Of course when I also pointed out that there are forums where text can be copied with one stroke - when such option is available...You see - I hate petty s..t and that is what most of the "turn-off" stuff on some forums is.
My mindset is I tell people how I feel about such nonsense, most other folks are smarter than that and just give up , hence less participation in forum.
As far as my "mindset problem" goes - I have been making good living by making things happen. I used to have low opinion about folks who made living by telling customer that he wants it in green color - that is the one they were peddling - and not in brown - as customer requested.
My job was - when something did not perform to customer satisfaction , as advertised, I had to make it perform and no amount of BS on my part would do.
"just the facts ma'am "Cheers
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@AnneRanch said in Less People Here?:
when I pointed out to the administrator that it takes SAME amount of mouse clicks to copy quoted text as unquoted text. Of course when I also pointed out that there are forums where text can be copied with one stroke - when such option is available...
I agree with that admin, although not formatting code is not something I would ever kick someone for. Just ask them politely to have more consideration for other user's time. It's as easy to copy text but it's much much harder to read it. I don't copy almost any code I read here and reading code in non-monospace font is just tiring to say the least.
My mindset is I tell people how I feel about such nonsense, most other folks are smarter than that and just give up , hence less participation in forum.
I honestly don't believe it has anything to do with level of participation here. I think you're projecting your very extreme views onto others. For the past I don't even know how long there were no voices here echoing any of your sentiments about apparent mods oppression you're experiencing. You're telling me you're the only person on the whole internet that voices these issues with this forum and there's a massive group of oppressed sitting quietly? Or is it just you? Which one is more likely? Ever heard of an Occam's razor?
My job was - when something did not perform to customer satisfaction , as advertised, I had to make it perform and no amount of BS on my part would do.
Cool, but it has nothing to do with this forum. You're not our customer. I, and most of the other moderators here, have about as much to do with Qt or Qt Company as you do. "Customer is always right" does not apply in this situation and we'll continue to point out your BS just as gladly as you do ours.
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@Chris-Kawa said in Less People Here?:
I agree with that admin, although not formatting code is not something I would ever kick someone for. Just ask them politely to have more consideration for other user's time. It's as easy to copy text but it's much much harder to read it. I don't copy almost any code I read here and reading code in non-monospace font is just tiring to say the least.
+1 We never "kick" anyone here for failing to quote. We just ask them to do so. There is a Code tag button (</>) when users post, or you can type triple-backticks from the keyboard before and after. Over the years I have used many forums where the conventions for specifying fixed-pitch text vary, but I have never minded taking the effort to do so. If you expect others to help you --- especially where some people paste hundreds of lines of text --- I can't imagine why anyone would not want to make the effort of a couple of key presses to present code reasonably, not expect poor responders to struggle through the original. I don't see anything impolite or unreasonable in this expectation.
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OK, let's look at this "enclosing in quotation marks" from different point of view.
Yes, for many newcomers code formatting is unknown.
And poorly formatted code is indeed hard to read and some readers will point that out.
But I have never heard or see anybody actually "complain" about code NOT enclosed in marks. Never.
Only the administrators will comment on that and as just demonstrated here will find plenty of reasons to make such comments .
Simply put - the users are OK with it, but administrators are not.
From that perspective and only in this discussion - who is indeed the customer here - users or administrators ? -
@AnneRanch said in Less People Here?:
Only the administrators will comment on that and as just demonstrated here will find plenty of reasons to make such comments .
Simply put - the users are OK with it, but administrators are not.It is (mostly) those of us whom you call "administrators" (although we are not necessarily administrators at all) who are the ones who actually answer most of the questions. Look at the statistics of the number of posts made by certain individuals and the up-votes they get, and have a think about the amount of time those people put in to read the questions, try to decipher them, and attempt to go back and forth in the answering. All for the users' benefit, not their own.
Certain other individuals seem happy to post an endless stream of questions without making any attempt to spend time answering other users' posts. Which is fine, until they carp on about how those who do try to answer do not meet their expectations and have the temerity to ask for some clarity to help both the questioner and themselves to reply.
Since you are so unhappy with the quality of answers you receive in this free forum, why don't you pay for support from The Qt Company, developers of Qt, and move across to their support forum? I don't think a volunteer forum like this meets your demands. As a paying customer you can then doubtless complain to them if you are not happy with the support you receive or if they fail to give you a reply in the terms you require. You can then express your righteous indignation if anyone dares to ask you to put reams of code inside 3 backtick characters, instead of spending more of their own time on it.
Or, you can get help on Qt questions for free on stackoverflow instead of here, and you won't have to deal with the nasty, unhelpful respondents in this forum.
From that perspective and only in this discussion - who is indeed the customer here - users or administrators ?
The point is that there are no "customers" here at all. The Qt Company has "customers". This forum just has users and unpaid volunteers....
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@AnneRanch said:
But I have never heard or see anybody actually "complain" about code NOT enclosed in marks. Never.
I've never heard of airplanes until I did. Funny how life presents us with new things all the time, isn't it?
Newcomers have been asked to format their code for over a decade that I'm here and I've never seen anyone reacting to it as a form of mod oppression. Hey! Something new for me too! Usually they're just grateful to learn new feature they didn't know about that helps them make their questions clearer -> get better answers from more people quicker. How on earth do you perceive that as a bad thing is beyond me. How much you're willing to fight for a right to be lazy and intentionally difficult to be helped is just ridiculous. You're working against your own interest here!Only the administrators will comment on that and as just demonstrated here will find plenty of reasons to make such comments .
That's their role to keep the forum orderly, but, as demonstrated even in this very thread (and many others if you actually look and not pull "facts" out of your imagination), not only mods. You're arguing with reality at this point. Yelling at clouds.
From that perspective and only in this discussion - who is indeed the customer here - users or administrators ?
One random person asks another random person on the street for directions. Sure you could , but do you really need to appoint a "customer" in that encounter? The point is they shouldn't be douche to each other. Make a clear question in a friendly manner and you'll get a clear answer in a friendly manner. Be an entitled brat that doesn't even bother to make their question comprehensible and you'll likely get attitude back. Do I really need to explain how social interactions work?
Simply put - the users are OK with it, but administrators are not.
OK? That's your opinion pulled out of thin air! Users don't complain about it as much because mods are there first usually, that's their role. It's like saying bystanders don't usually mount fire hoses or rush into the fire when they see a house burning and it's only the a-hole firefighters. That's their role! Do a poll among non-mod users if you want - who wants to read formatted vs unformatted code and you'll likely meet reality if it can ever reach you.
This argument is just silly at this point. There's no reaching you. You seem to be stubbornly stuck on the idea of harming yourself and others around you just because you have the right to and blame people that are here to help for trying. You've derailed yet another thread into this ridiculous rant and it's just... sigh, why, just why?
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Good morning,
nobody asked but I feel the urge to throw my bit into this particular conversation.I am not a mod/admin/whatever, just an ordinary user who six years ago gave up on one language and switched to C++, Qt C++ in particular. Out of pure interested, my day job is somewhat different.
I tried my luck on SO beforehand but I've been put off by "no forgiving", as it has been nicely put here before, petty attitude there. So I came here and sort of stayed. I am by and large no expert, I learn as I go, I sometimes lack basic C++ knowledge (and it shows sometimes). I develop tools in Qt but again, it is not the core of my work.
Like @fcarney - I learned a lot by just following the threads. Community here is build, as I see it and when you come down to those actively helping others, on mutual respect: respect for those who have knowledge and devote their time to solve problems encountered by the less experienced, respect for those who are learning and make mistakes - sometimes very silly mistakes - since we've all been learning those basics at some point. Unlike SO - it is OK in here to actually not know something simple.Of course, there is a margin of users who come here and expect everything to be handed over on a silver plate. Not presenting actual problems but "I want to write a program that does this and that, write it for me". But I think it is really a small margin, at least I don't see it often in the parts of the forum I track. But most of the users try to solve the problem by learning and present actual problem. I consider it my fair share to try to help them, if I can, as a form of giving back for what I've learned. I consider it only fair and that's purely my personal thing.
The attitude/communication problems are inevitable in a forum that welcomes people from many cultures (there also has been a thread on communication in English and forms of addressing other users in here). For some (or most? I don't have the numbers) the English is not their first language so slips will occur. And that brings us back to the attitude and expectations.
Like almost every forum this one has some rules. Those rules are meant to level the field, so to speak, to provide a common ground for communications channel that can be as comfortable to everyone involved as possible. Let's agree - comfort of having conversations here is crucial as I can't imagine anyone volunteering to help otherwise. Code formatting is one of the steps towards that - it is easier to read, you know that you're looking at the code (even if the code in question is of questionable quality), you don't need to guess what are you looking at. Well formatted post is a nice gesture towards others who will try to read it.
Same, I think, applies for the attitude towards people on the forum - one is meant to ask questions about particular problems they encounter. Throwing a random tantrum along the lines "this language is sooo stupid, I can't comprehend this" or, even worse, trying to blame other volunteers for a perceived language/tool imperfections (or trying to guilt-trip them into helping in a post full of said tantrums with little other content) is not only counter productive - it's plainly rude. I fully understand that language forms differ between the corners of the world and not everyone will use British figures of speech but basic manners are universal I think. Even if someone is using google translate. "I want and you are here to help me regardless of how I treat you", so American in its heart, simply does not fit. That's not a relation dynamics, that's sick.The above is purely my personal point of view of the forum, of curse. <rant />
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@fcarney Yes, I agree with you. At least compared to the same type of forum in our country, this forum is indeed more powerful, according to my personal feeling, I put forward the problem was solved here, thanks to those who helped me! I also sincerely hope that this forum will be more lively, go further!
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@sierdzio said in Less People Here?:
If the decline is true, I'd rather link it to the licensing practices of Qt Company.
Wow...I sure hope this isn't the case -- it would be a true shame if Qt's growth and acceptance were significantly curtailed by their licensing policy.
I for one find this forum invaluable. I suppose I could use SE, but asking questions on there just seems to instigate bored high school students to look for reasons to downvote the question.
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@mzimmers said in Less People Here?:
@artwaw said in Less People Here?:
"I want and you are here to help me regardless of how I treat you", so American in its heart,
Um...
Don't take it personally, I don't have anything against americans ... except the metric system that is ... ;)
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@kshegunov said in Less People Here?:
except the metric system that is ... ;)
Are we going down that rabbit hole again? :D
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@sierdzio said in Less People Here?:
Are we going down that rabbit hole again? :D
Not at all just having a little bit of fun at @mzimmers' nationality, harmless teasing, nothing more.
@mzimmers said in Less People Here?:
@artwaw said in Less People Here?:
"I want and you are here to help me regardless of how I treat you", so American in its heart,Just so we are clear I think this is a poor choice of words referring to the US being the proud flagman of consumerism (i.e. a reference to the "client's always right").
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@kshegunov said in Less People Here?:
except the metric system that is ... ;)
True story: back in the 1970s, the US made an attempt to convert to the metric system (to the exclusion of the Imperial system. It was a disaster, largely because of consumer pushback. One of the most bitter complaints was the move in the liquor industry to replace the "fifth" (one fifth of a gallon or 25.6 oz., a popular bottle size for spirits) with the 750 ml. or 25.4 oz. bottle.
"Those damn big companies are trying to steal 0.2 oz. from us!!"
Sigh...
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@kshegunov said in Less People Here?:
Just so we are clear I think this is a poor choice of words referring to the US being the proud flagman of consumerism (i.e. a reference to the "client's always right").
Interesting notion, though I'm not sure "consumerism" is the real issue -- if anything, it's "productionism" or "salesism." I'm fairly sure the saying "the customer's always right" was NOT invented by a customer.
Also, it would be interesting to know who is the anomaly in this regard. This sentiment seems to prevail throughout the New World, and the Far East at a minimum. I realize that the UK and western Europe don't embrace this philosophy, but perhaps it is they who are the exception...
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@mzimmers said in Less People Here?:
Interesting notion, though I'm not sure "consumerism" is the real issue -- if anything, it's "productionism" or "salesism."
Well, we can agree on any definition, but the idea that you need the new shiny thing and acquire more and more stuff is somewhat prevalent in the mind of the average person of the anglo-saxon world (or as you've put it - more correctly to say the new world).
I'm fairly sure the saying "the customer's always right" was NOT invented by a customer.
I'm fairly sure you're correct. Nevertheless socialist europe doesn't like that idea as much - the workers are also people and have dignity and rights being the main driving point against it.
Also, it would be interesting to know who is the anomaly in this regard. This sentiment seems to prevail throughout the New World, and the Far East at a minimum. I realize that the UK and western Europe don't embrace this philosophy, but perhaps it is they who are the exception...
Perhaps that's true, I really have no data to base any conclusion on it. But even if it were true, the old lady houses half a billion people, which I imagine is a bit more than (or at least on par with) the new world (or that specific part of the new world we are talking about.
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@mzimmers said in Less People Here?:
Um...
If you find that unfair - I apologise.
@kshegunov said in Less People Here?:
Just so we are clear I think this is a poor choice of words referring to the US being the proud flagman of consumerism (i.e. a reference to the "client's always right").
Yes and no. But I agree, I might have phrased that in a more precise way. I was indeed referring to the style that seems to be prevalent across the pond, not any particular person.
@mzimmers said in Less People Here?:
I'm fairly sure the saying "the customer's always right" was NOT invented by a customer.
I am with you on that one...
@mzimmers said in Less People Here?:
This sentiment seems to prevail throughout the New World, and the Far East at a minimum. I realize that the UK and western Europe don't embrace this philosophy, but perhaps it is they who are the exception...
...but I can speak only for myself and it is my experience: from all the people I've been working with or companies I cooperated with (as a client or contractor) that unwise approach is well rooted mostly there. Of course, it is only my impression and my experience, so probably is in some way biased.
@kshegunov said in Less People Here?:
the workers are also people and have dignity and rights being the main driving point against it.
YES.
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Since we've gone all light-hearted now....
@kshegunov said in Less People Here?:
except the metric system that is ... ;)
At least in my field everybody uses the metric
Anybody with any sense[TM] knows that the Imperial system relates better to the everyday real world than the Metric system. An inch, foot, yard, mile, pound, pint correspond much better to human experiences. We are not all nuclear scientists like your colleagues are, measuring in units which are abstract, plus have no soul....
:)
