(2012-05-09, 02:28 PM)Nathan Malcolm Wrote: [ -> ] (2012-05-09, 01:36 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ] (2012-05-09, 12:55 PM)Nathan Malcolm Wrote: [ -> ]Thread cleaned up. If you're having trouble with leaving constructive criticism, don't post.
I've said this a thousand times, but you can only give constructive criticism if there is something good to construct upon. You can't give constructive criticism for something with no redeeming qualities. This is bad. It's ugly. This guy clearly has no business starting a community about Photoshop. Sometimes people need the hard truth.
Suggest ways they can improve, what they need to be doing. Calling him an idiot isn't helpful to anyone.
It was a play on words on his homepage. I found it ironic.
Either way, you just spent a lot of words to tell him that everything is bad. Why waste the effort? If your really want to help, just post some links to good communities in his genre, some articles about community management, and say "learn." Need to stop treating people with baby hands here -- people need to learn for themselves and face reality.
(2012-05-09, 02:39 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ]Either way, you just spent a lot of words to tell him that everything is bad. Why waste the effort? If your really want to help, just post some links to good communities in his genre, some articles about community management, and say "learn." Need to stop treating people with baby hands here -- people need to learn for themselves and face reality.
It's not always about being generic with helping people. People won't know what's bad specifically unless you tell them. It's like if Google was to ask people for feedback on Google+ and they just said it was 'bad'. That's not helpful to the people who are in charge of developing Google+, is it?
For the more experienced administrators it may be obvious what's good and what's bad but new forum admins won't always know.
Hacker inside Idiot Outside , its just for fun , you can see the forum.
(2012-05-09, 01:36 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ] (2012-05-09, 12:55 PM)Nathan Malcolm Wrote: [ -> ]Thread cleaned up. If you're having trouble with leaving constructive criticism, don't post.
I've said this a thousand times, but you can only give constructive criticism if there is something good to construct upon. You can't give constructive criticism for something with no redeeming qualities. This is bad. It's ugly. This guy clearly has no business starting a community about Photoshop. Sometimes people need the hard truth.
*sigh*
I've thought this a thousand times: you really are the epitome of arrogance. That said, often you're right. You just express your opinions in a totally absurd manner. Just remember that you weren't a pro at anything from day one. You should give more people a chance. I agree that this guy's site is pretty ugly and he has a lot to learn, but maybe he'll produce something great with persistence. You can never truly know.
I can say one thing for sure, though. Nearly every active forum has one troll that loves to bend the rules to their liking, and be as much of a fig as possible without receiving a penalty. Congratulations—you're it.
I really, truly don't think I am arrogant. There are a lot of things I don't know, and I ask for people's support on those things. There are things I am wrong about, and I am happy to concede when I am wrong.
But I do think we need to look at things with a realistic frame of mind rather than sugarcoating things and, in the process, getting further away from the truth. For example, when someone writes a book -- even a self-published one -- we expect that they have a certain level of competence as a writer in order to release it. If the book is horribly written, showing no understanding of the basic rules of grammar and storytelling, readers and critics alike would rightly rip it apart.
Why, then, don't we expect this same level of basic competence from people who are creating forums and posting them here? Of course, everyone starts somewhere. It takes practice to become good at things. But we're not talking about a forum here that has some serious flaws but overall some promise. There is just nothing good here, this guy has no place running a forum about Photoshop. And according to his profile, he's my age! (Maybe it's a lie, but I can't really be held responsible for that.)
So at some point, don't we really need to say to people, "Yo, you really need to just quit this, improve your skills and start over"? Maybe I could have said it this way and people would have been more receptive, but I feel like this attitude in general is not accepted here, and frankly it brings the value of discussing community building here when the whole place is overwhelmed with people who are not taking this seriously. And this guy is not taking it seriously, at all. It's not just a lack of skill, it's a lack of commitment.
I think classifying me as a troll is short-sighted. I've made lots of good and positive contributions here. Generally though, people only remember the bad stuff, even though if you go through my posting history over the past few months you would find it to be overwhelmingly positive.
I'm sorry but that website looks absolutely horrible. I am an avid photoshop user, and my career depends upon photoshop, and viewing a site that is based upon photoshop that looks this bad is simply offending. I can't give anything that I could suggest to make it better, as the current state of that forum feels irreparable.