Newbies on this forum - rather long, and maybe comet-like ;) (Read 1169 times)

Trent, your GSP privileges are about to be revoked. Back in your cage.

GSP? MTA: Ironically... "Your search - GSP - were not found in any public forum posts." (Although I really should have known better to do that first...)

Hi Rose. Many of us, though not all of us, came from an older (and now basically defunct) message board called Cool Running. And for a long, long time, Cool Running's search was really hosed up, just like your other boards. To the point that they finally turned it off. I'd say your experience is not that uncommon. Most folks who came here from CR probably remember that. "comet" existed over there for several years, though it wasn't all that popular. But the idea that some threads have a habit of returning after short/medium/long absences (like a comet) was definitely part of the culture. I'm a newbie here too, but an oldbie to running and message boards. There will always be people who goof off (me!) and snark in message board threads. Hopefully, newbies can develop a reasonably thick skin and the ability to move past that to find the chunks of good info buried within. And over time, they can also start picking up the in jokes if they so choose (or ask about them). Or not if they don't. All of us, new and old, could probably utilize search better. Most of us simply don't.

Having been on the internet since the time of relay and old school usenet

>>TELL SRLOPEZ@UGETM.BITNET dude, you are old. >>

Write more - most of it easy, some of it funny, none of it harsh. PS - I get 600 miles out of my shoes.

That was so nice. I'm lucky if I get 300 out of my shoes. I wear the outside of my heals before the rest of the shoe.

((srlopez' core))

A couple of random thoughts - I don't often think about search on any forum. On one of them, I can get better search results by typing a thread name into google.com than I can from the search box on the forum itself. Rose

HEh!

Apparently I started a brouhaha. A kerfluffle, if you will. A tempest in a b-cup. Let me reiterate one point that keeps getting missed: the point of doing research before asking a very obvious question - is not necessarily to avoid annoying the veterans. The *main* benefit in doing that research is for the new runner who's posting the question. Since that's the one and only way to benefit from prior posts. The only one losing out when they skip the research is the new runner. We have real experts here. We have a runner here who's mentor was freakin' Lydiard himself. We have 2:30 marathoners and experienced ultramarathoners and collegiate athletes and state record holders here. And those people don't tend to answer questions more than once. On any obvious topic, I guarantee there have been long, long threads, full of detailed discussion on the topic. Sometimes ridiculously detailed. And sadly, what I now see over and over, is a new person skipping the research, then asking that same question, then getting very little real help. So they never see those awesome threads full of info. At best, they get a couple tepid responses, often from less experienced runners. Or some snarky comet sorta comments. Sometimes a few of us will, as Runner92 just suggested, do a quick search FOR them and post a few links to get them started. Then, ironically, we usually get accused of being rude ourselves. Like pointing out the search function is a slap in the face or something. So then we quit doing that, too. The bottom line is that its the new runner that loses out. And sadly, I think after this little dust-up, people will be even less likely to answer those questions. Now instead of links and comets, they may just get ignored. Which helps nobody. It really saddens me when I see a topic pop up for the tenth time in a month (or week), a topic that I know last month or last year led to a great discussion, with actual expert commentary ... and now gets hardly any response, none of it from the experts. This place is a goldmine of information. If you want to keep posting the same question, that's fine. Srlopez is right - the veterans can just skip the thread. But if you want that gold, you've got to go digging.