posting comments

there is a thin line between honest opinion and being rude, so we do have to be careful when responding to posts where pictures of fish or tanks are presented for scrutiny or id. as a fish show judge i have often had to downpoint a fish for being a hybrid or inbred and then be saddened to see the disappointment of the owner who had fully expected a best in show award or at least a good placing. we always believe our own fish are the best there is and this is fair enough, as they are our pets.
when a shop or other vendor sells a fish they will tell you it is this and that sort of vintage and quality but sometimes this is the blind leading the blind. you may get a good fish or you may not, mostly these fish are juveniles and only time will tell.
when we present a fish for scrutiny on a forum, we will only hear compliments as nobody wants to hurt feelings.
so, who can tell. i know people who are fishkeeping a short time who are better than some of the old hands who are at it for decades but equally i know some budding experts who are telling us all how to vent and strip.
the trick is to know enough to decipher to your benefit,the information which you can glean from as many sources as possible.
i reckon i was lucky coming into fishkeeping when the irish hobby was dominated by straight talking northern presbyterians who called a spade a spade and this led to better fish quality and more knowledgeable fishkeepers.
anyway hope this elicits some upfront response from the lurkers and pmers as well as the usual loyal respondents .

Yeah, this needed to be said. I agree that folks should show a little savy before posting something but I really do think the gloves should come off sometimes when a poster throws up a pic of a tank or a fish that is either in bits or heading that way. Giving folks props when they need to be given advice is a waste of time in my opinion as the person posting learns nothing. I see no reason to walk on eggshells here other than constructive critisism is a bit lacking here and the guy who does pipe up may seem like a bit of a troll, mabey not by the admins or mods, but by other members. Recent events on the boards here show the other side of the coin. If a member cant express his/her opinion without being slated, then where is the incentive for them to post their opinion again? In fairness to the admins it was nipped in the bud fairly sharpish. Its vital for a forum to have input from as many people as possible in order to expand, so come on lurkers, join up and to members who dont post as much anymore, get typing...

Jay

Totally agree with Derek and Jay. If you don't know theres a problem, your'e never going to be able to fix it.

ITFS THE I STANDING FOR IRISH WHICH INTITLES US TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Total freedom is a term for a utopic society where even the theory of freedom is not really possible.

Allowing total freedom for one person may remove the freedom of another person…….person ‘A’ may want the freedom to smash Person Bs car, but the car owner may want the freedom not to have his car smashed.

Freedom of speech is on the same level.
I am a believer in freedom of speech but not at the level to make a personal attack on an innocent person, or to use a personal attack the pivot in a discussion on a topic.

My experience as a parent has seen immature kids use such tactics to ‘win’ a debate: I remember times of telling my lads off for doing something wrong (maybe fighting at school) and they came back with “what would you know, your hair is turning grey and your car is crap”.
A blatant show of immaturity…..unless it is tastefully done with a genuine sense of humour attached (there’s harm in having in-house jokes).

I have seen a recent set of threads in which I am concerned that it looks like a change in forum users has taken place in correlation to those threads. I don’t know the story, but I know what it looks like to me….and I don’t like the look of it.

Forums are a difficult place to reside.

One never knows what might come and from what angle it may come.
There is no way of knowing if comments are from persons with the expertise to help, or if they simply guess and don’t know anything yet still give a reply,
or are an expected reactionary response,
or if they have a chip on their shoulder,
or if they wish to wave the potential to easily bully-at-a-safe-distance,
or trolls,
or if the wording is just poor wording in a well intended post.

There have been times when someone new to the whole experience of fish-keepings arrives on a forum (not just here) and posts a picture of their tank.
It may well be a 54 litre tank with two goldfish in it…….and then I have seen comments posted making references to ‘O My God that is a disgrace’ or ‘…cruelty..’ being screamed at the original poster.

Yes, sometimes we need to advise that something may be considered a ‘No No’, but then there times when that ‘No No’ may be no more than an accepted rule-of-thumb or a consensus. But it may not, however, be correct.
It is fine if a rationale can be given, but often I see no rationale given….just simple dogmatic replies. Not really helpful for someone who may wish to go much further from their initial venture into fishkeeping to deeper understanding (and maybe even one of our future advisors on aquaria).

I am not prepared to hide behind a forum username; I don’t expect others to share the same view: but that is part of an allowable freedom.

My opinion on making comments on a forum is that I would not say something on a forum that I would not say in a public meeting (and, again, that is a freedom that others may not wish to follow).

Ian

FREEDOMMMMMM

Agree strongly with Derek on this, we need to be able to critic peoples fish without fear of being slammed over it, hell i know some of my fish aint perfect but i try and when someone like Derek critics it i have no problems with it as he qualifies his criticism when he does so, so if we all do so where would be the problem... its being rude and not qualifying statements that can cause offence, just my pennies(or now cents worth)

Constructive critisium for myself is always welcome. Being new to fishkeeping and having a serious lack of knowlage, I will take on board all advice and constructive crit I get on the forum's. Altough I find what happens quite alot is the fact that (tone of voice) can sometimes be lost when typing. It can seem hard to get your point across in a post and get it to sound like it did in your head.

What also has to be considered is the age range of the people on the forum.What might seem like quite an average and acceptable term of phrase to younger people could be totally offensive to the older posters.When I type out a post I will usually read it a few times over, to make sure there is nothing that would cause offence or seem confrontational. But thats just how I do things.

Freedom of speach is great, but the freedom to post and not be personally targeted or mocked for your views is alot better.

Cheers stuart.

Facebook John H could u explain i no it's a social networking site just wondering what it has to do with this topic

wylam wrote:

................................

What also has to be considered is the age range of the people on the forum.What might seem like quite an average and acceptable term of phrase to younger people could be totally offensive to the older posters...................................

Cheers stuart.

I'm one of them older codgers Stuart......and it would take an awful lot to offend me.

But on a more serious note, yes there are generation gap things and it may not just be in a single direction (possibly use of phrasing used by older people may come across as offensive to younger members).
There is also language/translation differences....region of the world is important (and I don't just mean ireland, england, germany, usa etc, but the regions within those countries have different mannerisms in speech).

ian

christyg hit de nail on the head there

great to see this topic coming up and i couldnt agree more about the thin line comment when i was first on the forum i was very carefull to post incase i posted the wrong thing and got judged ,and then i found that sometimes it was like a click if your not known you dont get the same response as others .and then alot of comments about the amount of posters on the site or regular posters ther called and its great for people who have the time to do that .and them same posters are the people who i learn about my fish from and am extremely
greatful but i personaly work dif shifts and have a fish house with alot of fish and can often feel frowned upon for not being here enough .it has often been said when free stuf is been given away regular user only need apply thats an example of what im talking about.so when your not known and you post something and people dont take the time to comment that can be worse than getting constructive critism even if your post is only a simple question .i hope that makes a little bit of sense and if it dosnt i know what im trying to say .glad thats off me chest.ciaran

@JohnH, I know this is a bit off topic but I see facebook has reared it's ugly head there in the thread- would it be useful to this forum to steal the idea of a 'like' button from fakebook and add it next to the 'thank you' option at the bottom of a topic? Would that encourage people to comment on nice tanks etc or not??

Credit to Derek for bringing this up. He has done a lot of work lately to try and generate some life in the forum,please admins and co,I'm not saying anything bad about the forum there,but we have to agree Derek is putting up some stimulating posts to try and generate some chat.
My feeling is that it is sometimes very hard for some posters to understand exactly the tone and way a post was intended,wylam really hit the nail on the head in that regard,and Ian reinforced it. Tone,etc can be a very hard thing to get acroos in text,what to one is praise,can be taken the wrong way by others,and really upset them. I often read my posts the day after I posted them and think "holy poo,that could really come across the wrong way". I put that down to my bad(?) habit of enjoying some sort of naughty liquid whilst being online. There is probably a dozen or so nationalities on this forum,and we all have our own ways of saying something,and as Ian said,that even comes down to regions,even estates,etc. Eg,you could be in a pub in Dublin and someone would comment,"It's really black in here tonight isn't it",now,would you say that in,say a pub in Johannesburg?
It is very hard sometimes to log on,see someone has gone to the effort of taking some nice pics,posting them up,and there's a host of replies saying "lovely fish!",and you're looking at them going,'there's a good few of them should've been culled,the rest are pretty lousy looking",I've had people pm'ing me saying that sort of thing on posts that are generating huge amounts of praise. I won't mention some photo comp entries,see,there's the old 'can't offend them' thing again!
Enough rambling from me,off to open another bottle,then wake up tommorrow to cringe as I re-read this

Hopefully JohnH would've signed out of his secret facebook page,and returned here to join us

some great comments there and plenty of food for thought and its nice to see some new posters adding input instead of just the few reliables.
wylams point about re reading contentious replys before posting is something i always do myself and ciarans point about avoiding looking clickish is worth our consideration.
forums are a great learning aid as well as being entertaining, but it is important to give as well as take, and within reason to show a little courtesy combined with a degree of straight talking.

Interesting thread!

I do agree with most statements here with regards to manors and common sense while posting, I try to think about what the original poster is looking for in a reply.

If someone posted a picture of their "mix of guppies" that they just bought for their first tank for instance, comments about show standards are completely irrelevant. While if that poster would have labeled the post "Grade my show guppies" it would have been another discussion altogether.

When it comes to posting and joining discussions, there are people out there like myself who really enjoy the forum and what it offers in advice but simply can't commit as much time to it as others for different reasons. I don't see this as a problem although I have sometimes refrained from posting when knowing that i would not be able to follow the post up for some time.

Melander

Melander wrote:

If someone posted a picture of their "mix of guppies" that they just bought for their first tank for instance, comments about show standards are completely irrelevant. While if that poster would have labeled the post "Grade my show guppies" it would have been another discussion altogether.

Melander

thats a good point and some care is required when replying. but the standard of fish will not be raised till we know to some extent what a good fish should look like.

@ciaranm nice post mate; very valid points too.

Looking forward to reading more views here.

I've seen this issue before on forum's, about people having busy lives nad not having the time to spend reading post and replying on forums, until they see something that take's their interest that is.Then they post a reply, it's only natural for the regular posters to give this reply little weight. They do not know the poster. they don't know what kind of experience they have, what kind of fish they keep etc.

I have a busy life, I spend 15mins each night on this forum and post one or two replies and/or ask a question.It doesn't take long before your a "regular" poster.Imo some people only want what they can get, while giving, as little as they possibly can. But i've found you will get more out of this forum by putting in a little effort yourself.

Cheers Stuart.

derek wrote:

Melander wrote:

If someone posted a picture of their "mix of guppies" that they just bought for their first tank for instance, comments about show standards are completely irrelevant. While if that poster would have labeled the post "Grade my show guppies" it would have been another discussion altogether.

Melander

thats a good point and some care is required when replying. but the standard of fish will not be raised till we know to some extent what a good fish should look like.

Agreed, In many cases I feel that no reply is better than an incorrect one.

I suppose in one way it's the responsibility of the original poster too, to make clear what he/she is looking for.

Melander

wylam wrote:

I've seen this issue before on forum's, about people having busy lives nad not having the time to spend reading post and replying on forums, until they see something that take's their interest that is.Then they post a reply, it's only natural for the regular posters to give this reply little weight. They do not know the poster. they don't know what kind of experience they have, what kind of fish they keep etc.

I have a busy life, I spend 15mins each night on this forum and post one or two replies and/or ask a question.It doesn't take long before your a "regular" poster.Imo some people only want what they can get, while giving, as little as they possibly can. But i've found you will get more out of this forum by putting in a little effort yourself.

Cheers Stuart.

I understand that irregular posters posts are given less weight, but I don't think there is allot of people that refrain from posting because they don't want to give anything back. The odd post in the for sale section perhaps.

I think it would be very bad if it came to a point where members (new and old) will feel that they have to post just for the sake of posting. Quality over quantity.

This is my last post for a few days btw.

Melander

There are different ways of contributing....but a forum is problematic in that it limits the means of contribution that we would have in, say, a society meeting.

In a society meeting, or a talk, or a lecture (at whatever context or event), it is not just the speaker who is contributing to the topic: listeners also contribute irrespective of whether or not they verbally express that contribution.
The same goes for musicians doing a gig....a gig also depends on the contribution of the audience.

I suppose at a big rock concert, if I were asked about the VIP room then I would have a problem seeing how 30,000 people could fit into the room designated as for 'VIPs'.....but that, and similar things, is just my somewhat rebellious take on life in general.

It is not who says it, but what is said and backed-up that is important. I like to hear all voices (apart from aggressive anti-social dogmatic didactic dictatorship or similar).

ian

Melander wrote:

I think it would be very bad if it came to a point where members (new and old) will feel that they have to post just for the sake of posting. Quality over quantity.

This is my last post for a few days btw.

Melander

I see your point but I was just giving an example of the way I do things. I wasn't suggesting that everyone spam the forums with junk posts, because as you said quality over quantity.

Cheers Stuart.

@Draco....language translators can be a pain at time, and the fine subtle pieces adding or softening an edge can be lost in translation. (I had a great laugh reading the english translation of some piece of equipment last week).

I wouldn't go as far as saying that people posting pictures and expecting some complements is hypocrisy though.

We also have to be careful with patronising people or forgetting the fact that many of us once had our very first tank.

If someone is starting out in fish keeping what they may think is the bees-knees and perfectly OK, and thus post a picture with some joy, may be in total innocence of the situation rather than knowing it is awful and still expecting praise.

Now, we could also argue that someone starting out should 'do their homework'....but there in resides a major problem: from where should they do their homework? how would someone starting out know what is right and what is wrong? How would they know if what an LFS or forum advice is correct or not?

Should we cut-down into pieces someone who shows off their tank yet it clearly shows fish that experienced a nitrate spike for a few days, say, 2 years ago?
In a show, the fish would probably get marked down. But many judges may help explain why it was marked down even though it looks perfectly healthy.

ie where is the line at which we start criticism?
is it a line of personal values?
is it a line on which someone has a focused bee-in-their-bonnet about?
is it a line drawn by a critic who may not realise that they themselves have missed something important?

Ummm..all philosophical stuff, and a topic that I think is important (and not just in fish-keeping but in general learning curves).

I approach things on different levels....when I teach beginners in a subject, I have a lot of patience; but when I am teaching advanced stuff for those in a higher level then I was known as a real B* as I expected a lot more from my students. I could not use my rather rude approach with people starting out.

But that is me.

ian

Draco,

I wouldn't worry about your standard of English on this Forum-It's quite atrocious at times from so-called first English language speakers. So much for your average student doing their Leaving Cert subjects through the Irish language!!!

Dave

great to see this post still going strong i put some photo.s up before and they were absolutely brutal i was sorry as soon as i hit the submit button .quality of fish are great but the quality of my photos were shocking and i got loads of well deserved critisism .and i have taken loads more photos of my realy nice fish and guess what ther still shocking and im not going to put my hand out to be slapped again .so if ther is any usefull info out ther for people like me with some nice fish but havnt got the photo skills let us know ,so we can put this post into action and get our fish up here for critisim or praise for the fish ciaran

[quote="igmillichip" post=103644I approach things on different levels....when I teach beginners in a subject, I have a lot of patience; but when I am teaching advanced stuff for those in a higher level then I was known as a real B* as I expected a lot more from my students. I could not use my rather rude approach with people starting out.

But that is me.

ian[/quote]

could'nt imagine you being rude ian

the above approach is probably the best way, maybe direct rather than rude though