Please be patient while reading this and you may want to skip to the commen= ts after the post below if you have read it before. =20 I am inlcuding the post to the last message written that I looked at from t= he digest from March 1, 2011: =20 *************************************************** Message: 61 Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 11:32:19 -0500 From: "Olin Lathrop" Subject: Re: [OT] Official Comment and Pronouncement Re: Newbie Posts To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." Message-ID: <014101cbd82e$3cd5c950$0300a8c0@main> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3D"iso-8859-1" =20 RussellMc wrote: > Without going back and looking I know how it felt just reading it, > whatever it said. =20 But that's no standard at all. You can't have rules based on how other people might feel. At the very least, it will vary widely, let alone being impossible to judge fairly. =20 You didn't look at it, but you should have before claiming it to be so horrible. So here is the entire post: =20 DIN ROFIE wrote: > i really need help on 16f877 as temperature controller =20 What exactly is the problem statement of this homework assignment? =20 Where are you located? =20 Is there any reason you can't do something as simple as: =20 if temperature is low then heater on else heater off repeat =20 > but i dunno how to attach the flow chart and circuit design as > reference since the content only limited to 10kb =20 So put it on a server and post a link. Before you ask 2000 people to look at your work, make sure it is presentable and in a reasonable format. Make sure every part in the schematic has a designator so we can talk about it easily. Make sure labels are readable and not overlapping other things, etc. Use a reasonable file format. Many people won't be able to read your schematic if it is in the proprietary format of your EE CAD tool. Exporting it to PDF would be a good idea. Remember that JPEG isn't good for line art. Don't just take a screen snapshot. Do it right. =20 When someone asks questions, answer ALL of them as asked, whether you think they are relevant or you understand their purpose or not. =20 As I said before, this asked 3 relevant questions to get badly needed missing technical details and context about the problem, then described how to supply more information in a way to NOT cause the usual issues we see with newbies. Everyone that has been around here for a while knows that these aren't just hypothetical issues. Newbies frequently do badly in supplying relevant information and with a level of attention to detail to make it useful. Then it sometimes turns into the food fight you claim to dislike. From the original post, there was particularly high expectation this newbie would not do a good job, so advising how to do it right probabl= y headed off a lot of trouble later. Unfortunately we can't replay it the other way and see. =20 None of this was insulting. You could call it a "lecturing" tone, but so be it. None of this was against list policy or even list spirit as I think most people would interpret it. You have the right to not like it on your end, but you are way out of line coming down on this in a official capacity= .. As admins you have exercised bad judgement in objecting to this post, and overstepped your legitimate authority in trying to punish it. =20 Before you look to my response as a problem, you should consider the action= s of this poster. Despite repeated requests, he never answered these simple questions. Eventually I asked similar ones again explicitly, which he finally answered, and then got useful advice about his problem. I never saw a schematic from him, so I don't know how carefully drawn it was. However, even though I suggested PDF format, he apparently tried to dump DOCX on us. That's not what I would call a "offense", but PDF would have been a better idea and also illustrates how generally uncooperative this OP was. Think about it. Would we even be having this discussion if the OP had simply answered the three quite reasonable questions I asked? Was there any legitimate reason he shouldn't have been able to answer those questions? ************************************************************************* =20 After reading the posts from the digest from yesterday I felt like weighing= in a couple of times. However, I felt I was not getting the whole picture = and so went to the www.piclist.org page to read the previous posts on this = topic. Some of the issues discussed in this thread may be caused by the for= mat of the forum itself. (--> For the post to this thread about Marshall Mc= Luhan (see post 44 from yesterday's digest) this is the feeling behind his = comment "the medium is the message.")=20 =20 My experience with this particular forum is that it is harder to use than o= ther forums due to the limitations in searching. Most other forums have an = easy to use search engine that results in the easy to follow tracing of pos= ts back to the original topic if needed. I have also found that the home pa= ge for this forum is hard to read and to discern where I can get answers on= questions I have about: =20 1) How do I join? 2) How do I post or reply to a post? 3) How do I search for a topic? =20 For 3) listed immediately above, I found that there is a limited search fun= ction archive link (http://www.piclist.org/techref/postbot.asp) which is lo= cated in the first paragraph in the home page. As I look more and more at t= his site I am finding more about how to find the original topics and the li= ke; I am navigating it better as I look at it more. I do not use the site m= ore because I find it not to be user friendly. =20 What is the point of all this and how does it relate to the topic of this t= hread? =20 When you get a newbie you have a couple of issues to deal with: 1) they are= not familiar with the material they are researching, and 2) they might not= be familiar with how to best word their queries to get the quickest, most = thorough results. =20 Add to that the circumstance that some posters will not be very fluent in t= he english language and the problem is compounded. Also, human nature gets = the better of us at times and we try to get the job done with the least amo= unt of effort possible. We will often question others while providing littl= e information in the hopes that the answer we are looking for is very easy = to provide. =20 If I have problems while initially navigating the PICList forum website, ho= w daunting is for those whose mother tongue is not english? =20 A little more work with the design of the webpage would provide better gain= s from its use. With many computer screens 17" and above, the readable text= on the page is too wide and hard to track from line to line. Many of the f= eatures of the forum get buried in the large amount of text seen on the pag= e at any one time. A lot of schools have many of their programs work togeth= er on projects by having the students from one program build small parts of= projects for other programs. I am sure that MIT would be able to do the sa= me. It would be really nice to see somebody come through on that ASP based = search engine project! I find it a little odd that the site has a search en= gine visible on the page that does not work. It could lead users to think t= hat there is no way of searching posts at all. First impressions of the enc= ounters we have in life often stick with us as that being the final answer.= Many times, it is only later that we search for that alternative when the = problem comes ! back to mind. =20 We should also remember that when we cannot hear the voice of the poster to= whom we reply, we should take the post with some caution about what is rea= d into the "tone" of the post. =20 --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .