What grinds my gears on the forum

English Open Chat
1

so a list of my complaint so far. what dose everyone else think? honest opinions welcome.

complaint 1

the whole point of communication is to communicate and yes i understand if you have a hard time reading something i write let me know in a pm its more personal and respectful. i at least personally do not like my grammar and spelling mistakes pointed out for the world to see. makes me feel worried to even post a lot of the time like what dose someone gain by doing that to someone else in public?

complaint 2
i really wish i was allowed to delete my own posts that i make myself. i mean what if i post something i regret. again adding to and realy makes me worry weather or not i should even bother posting knowing i cant fix my mistakes my just deleting them.

complaint 3
and this one is obvious i sometimes wish i could curse on here within limits and reason like for example what is “crazy” happening with my terminal output? i just feel its personally silly to care to that degree if its not meant to be in any way hurtful or directed with any negative or bad intent. this one i get not my website not my rules just gotta follow them duh just a minor gripe

complaint 4
sometimes ive asked for help and gotten snippy responses stating things like “did u even bother to google it” or “if you take the time to do research you would find it here is a link to a google search” like i understand they may not know that i did in fact google it first and did not get similar results just seems unfair to assume and make me look dumb like what dose that make one gain? i mean it first off makes me look dumber and second makes it seem as if i was being lazy or didn’t try when in fact i did then makes me feel like a snippy person when i have to apologize and point out that i did in fact try otherwise i wouldn’t be asking for help. so please be kind and just help

2

complaint 5
i cant think of a good example but there have been one or two times where someone else had pointed out a flaw with something i posted then i explained how i thought its rude of them to do that in a public place reminding them to just help one another instead of pointing out flaws then im the one to get punished or my post deleted for whatever obscene reason. like am i just cursed? this one may be a me problem just wrong place wrong time or im unlucky i assume.

3

We all make spelling and grammar mistakes. It’s no big deal. People are not going to think badly of you because of such a mistake.

Some of the people who post in English are not native English speakers. So it is no surprise that there are mistakes. When a spelling or grammar mistake makes a post hard to read or understand, we should appreciate that being pointed out.

I’m not quite sure what the complain is. There would not be problem saying that something happening on your screen seems to be crazy. But we don’t like it when “crazy” is applied to a person.

I would prefer if people didn’t do that. But we cannot control what other people post.

4

In general, it’s a good idea, to post what you’ve tried/searched for, so far, when asking a question, as it heads this sort of comment off at the pass.

Assuming people bother to read, which yes, can be a problem.

Sometimes adding a simple “I have websearched this and not found anything that appears to fix this issue” is enough.

5

complaint 1

no i understand its no big deal but its still frustrating when people point out gramar mistakes instead of helping ya know. and yea i an see how i would help others read but still wish i could be done in a more personal non revealing way.

complain 3

i would never apply crazy to a person just sometimes situations or applications can be frustrating is all and expressing it more would feel nice and free.

complaint 4

that is true people will be people not much we can do except hope for people to do better for others and themselves.

6

i understand and see how that could be helpful but should i really go tat far to assume others wouldnt assume i did the obvious first? i mean sure everyone is different but i wouldnt assume they didnt do the basic obvious first. but maybe thats just me

7

No, we really don’t. Especially if we’ve been supporting users for years at this point, and are very used to people using chats/forums as some sort of search engine.

Because that is exactly how some people use them.

It’s insulting, but “Let me google that for you” is a thing, as an expression of sheer frustration, honestly.

8

so its more of a cultural like thing in a sense i suppose crafted over time. and if you dont know then well you dont know,

9

“Obvious” to you is not obvious to anyone else reading what you’ve written.

“Obvious” is based on ones’ own experiences.

We only know what you tell us, and what we can understand in what you’re telling us.

You have said for a long time that the “point of communication is to communicate”. Communication isn’t facilitated, particularly in a technical context, by assuming others know exactly what you did and how you did it. I’ve been doing technical troubleshooting for over 30 years, and I can tell you that the “obvious” things are most often what is missed, even by those with expertise.

By omitting those “obvious” things, you really leave those trying to help little choice but to actually ask if you considered those. That’s the only way to avoid wasting their time going down the rabbit-hole of the more obscure reasons why something might be broken.

It’s hard experience that does that and then comes back to a conversation that goes “oh, I should have rebooted.” “Oh, I assumed that you did that, because IT WAS OBVIOUS YOU NEEDED TO DO THAT.” :roll_eyes:

Remember that those trying to help only know what you tell them. And they probably won’t remember from one question to the next what your configuration is, because for some, they’ll have seen literally hundreds of questions between your questions.

Effective communication means a few things, including clear writing, not omitting key facts, and, if a mistake is made in that communication, the miss being dealt with rapidly. a PM saying “hey, you forgot to tell us ‘x’” breaks a conversation (which is what the topics are).

When it comes to clear writing, the author doesn’t get to declare that what they wrote is clear. Their opinion doesn’t actually matter. The only opinion that truly matters is that of the audience. Trust me, as a published author, when I say this: If your audience doesn’t understand you, they’re going to ignore you.

So rather than complain, perhaps a little introspection is called for.

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10

1 - grammar-nazis exist, this is the internet afterall.
2 - I completely agree.
3 - I’m not at all concerned with whether certain words are banned, so long as it doesn’t hinder effective communication.
4 - while this may be directed at your post, it also serves as a reminder to other users before they make a new post
5 - criticism often does not sound polite.

Three of these can be solved by being less sensitive to the ramblings of strangers on the internet. We are a bunch of socially inept nerds who spend too much time online, don’t pay too much attention to us.

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11

I did not read all of the above. But this article is worth while reading when asking for help in a technical forum: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way .
Be aware that not all said there is applicable to the openSUSE forums, but some of them are very to the point as is the general idea.

That said, posting in as good as possible English will help very much in making a post readable and understandable. Specially for non-native English speakers. Using slang or pointing to movies or TV series that may be very unknown to many will make a post a candidate for skipping (after all there are better things to spend one’s free time on).

And yes, using capitals at the start of a sentence and for the first person “I” makes things better readable.

1 Like
12

Hi

If you type it all out in LibreOffice Writer, and spell and grammer check, then grammar check, then check your granma, copy and paste into here.

As to verboten words
Ford Cortina car is acceptable in most forums,
Ford Escort is verboten, so if you want to swear, and I learned this off a journo who used to write for Personal Computer World,

post a picture of a ford escort so the bad words are not read by a profanity filter.

END OF.

1 Like
13

i get what ur saying but sometimes its not as simple as that ya know. unfortunately its hard to convey tings in a way everyone can understand and in a way that will satisfy everyone without any prior knowledge on how they may act or react to what you have to say , and yes what seems obvious to one person may not seem that way to another sure but why is everyone so quick to assume when it benefits them most? i suppose thats what makes us human

14

yea thats life i suppose and people but bow can it suck when ur on the wrong side of things weather circumstantial or otherwise.

15

that makes sense how it could help others and thats important but i who knows maybe ill learn more grammar skills and punctuation skills when i have more free time from work and life and or if i feel its worth my time.

16

thats more effort then i usually wanna involve myself in but ill keep it in mind if i feel its important to convey in a way that requires it.

17

If you follow the conventions you see in the community (whatever community it is), you generally cannot go wrong.

Yes, we are all the product of our own experiences. Assuming that others have the same experiences that we do is going to lead to lack of understanding.

The onus is on the writer to be clear. If the audience doesn’t understand, then the writer hasn’t taken the audience into account.

I’ve been a professional writer and a published author. I have developed and delivered technical training. If I had done that without taking my audiences’ likely experiences into consideration, then I would not have been successful at doing so.

Here’s an exercise to maybe help you understand the point better. Read the following:

Vzcyrzrag n qvfgevohgrq, snhyg-gbyrenag, rirag-qevira nepuvgrpgher hfvat n pbzovangvba bs xreary guernqf, hfre-fcnpr qnrzbaf, naq n zrffntr-cnffvat VCP zrpunavfz. Yrirentr gur cbjre bs ptebhcf gb rasbepr erfbhepr dhbgnf naq vfbyngvba, juvyr bcgvzvmvat cresbeznapr jvgu AHZN-njner zrzbel nyybpngvba naq V/B fpurqhyvat.

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Personally, I think it’s extremely clear what I’m saying there - so clear that I don’t need to provide any context at all.

But what I think doesn’t matter, and if you don’t know that (a) it’s rot13 encoded, and (b) that it’s AI-generated technobabble that is absolutely meaningless (once decoded), then what I’ve written has no meaning for you at all.

And if I assume that you either just know that that’s what it is, or that you can figure it out from context, then it’s most certainly my fault for not telling you those critical pieces of information.

And as much as I hate to say this (and this isn’t personal, this is general for anyone attempting to get help in an online community), that means that making an effort at spelling, punctuation, and grammar does make a difference.

For one thing, a wall of text with no line breaks, little to no punctuation, and that just reads as “stream of consciousness” is generally going to just get ignored, because it takes too much effort to try to figure out what the author is trying to say.

If you want help, you have to make it easy for those who are here to help.

Being able to be understood is a critical life skill, in my opinion. Those who can’t be understood easily tend not to be heard.

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Just a note - attempting to circumvent the T&Cs and the code of conduct in this manner will likely result in actions being taken.

1 Like
19

yea i get it if we use grammar and punctuation it helps everyone i just dont see a reason to point it out . and as to what degree i feel the audience needs to understand is also important. if im for example righting my lifes work and everything i have in life is riding on the success of this one book or screen play then sure yea i can see how it is 100% important but if its a forum and i misspelled a word or two and forgot a period then well as long as the message is conveyed then thats whats important to me. even with bad grammar and punctuation i dont think ive once had a single person not know what i was trying to convey they just had to at best guess a time or two. so for lack of explanation people usually understand regardless. but hey people are gonna point out mistakes were human it makes us feel better weather for good intent or not i just sometimes wish people were more self aware but i suppose in the grand scene of things i can do little to change that and must live with it and how it may or may not make me feel as will they.

20

See, this was an example of something that was so difficult to follow, I stopped reading after the first couple of lines.

Yeah, it’s not your life’s story. But if it’s worth writing for others to read, it’s worth making it easy to understand. If it’s not worth making it easy for others to understand, then consider whether or not it’s worth writing.

What you seem to be missing is that “as long as the message is conveyed” is not for the author to determine. If people have a hard time understanding it, the message wasn’t conveyed. Communication isn’t just about putting words out there. It’s about being understood.

I learned this lesson from an English teacher I had in middle school. Take pride in your writing. I had horrible penmanship (I still do, to be fair). She gave a paper back to me that was utterly unreadable and made me redo it so she could read it in order to grade it. She felt it was worth her time to teach that to me, rather than just failing my work.

I try to pay that lesson forward whenever I can, because it’s important for people who are communicating to be understood.

Yeah, a misspelled word here or there isn’t a big deal. A missed period or comma on occasion is not unheard of.

butwritingalongparagraphwithoutwordbreaksspacesperiodspunctuationoranysortofbreakjustmakesitinpossibloetounderstandthepointhtattheauthoistringtomke

(an extreme example, but I truly have seen people do this exact thing)

Can it be understood? Yes? Does it take effort? It took effort for me to even write it that way, and I have a hard time reading it, even though I wrote it.

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