Technical discussions are a good thing. People can learn things, issue can be debated and sorted out, etc.

There are some people however, who have a poor technical understanding of things, and like to jump in with hearsay and subjective anecdotes, presenting them as objective facts.

When these people are asked to clarify their points or back them up, they fail to respond, resort to namecalling, or accusations of trolling.

Obviously, that can be frustrating.

Could we perhaps have a guideline that says if you make a claim in a technical discussion(which could be clearly marked as such, or in an appropriate forum), that you have to back it up? Not necessarily with sources, but with more than just unfounded assumptions and anecdotes.

Perhaps, we could make the Win2008Workstation Expert title only for those who are actually technical, allowing people with the titles to engage in debate, and "ignore"* those without?

*Not ignore...but give less serious consideration to....or something

Just an idea.

It seems that we have several rules that roughly cover this issue but I would be happy to add another rule clarifying this if it seems necessary.

As for the Win2008Workstation Expert ranks, you would have to ask Arris what should be done about those. He said that he gives them if:



but I am not sure if he has revised them since he gave them out to certain users. I would wait for Arris on this part and he can review who has the rank and see if they still deserve it. As far as I know, they do not have access to the Staff Forum or any other extras besides having the word "Win2008workstation Expert" under their names as moderation and other permissions are managed via Groups. For example, I don't have a "Moderator" rank under my name, but I am indeed a moderator. This is because I am in the Global Moderator group which gives me access to the Mod CP (where reports, bans, etc are dealt with), Quick-Mod Tools and other Moderator-related things in all forums. On other sites they may have more than one group for different levels of moderators like "Moderators" (per-forum basis), and "Super Moderators" (between Global Moderator and Administrator). It also depends on the forum software. On Invision Power Board and maybe vBulletin, you can let certain moderators have limited access to the Admin CP to edit signatures/etc or it may have that feature built into the Mod CP - it varies by forum software and how the admins wish to run their board.

I do understand that this may be an issue because someone may take an "Experts" advice and it could turn out to be completely wrong (especially if like you said, is not backed up). It's more of a "Karma" (Reputation) thing you see at other forums (as far as I know).

At the moment, I am getting very frustrated with a poster who does not understand how exceptions work, and believes their own flawed understanding to be correct, despite being presented with authoritative evidence to the contrary!

The discussion is anything but technical, and such behavior is being rewarded at present. The user is anything but technical, and currently holds an 'expert' title. It really is not fitting in the least.

I know that we have enough technical users on this site, Arris, JonusC, etc, who could oversee such discussions, and point out when people insist on relying on their flawed understanding, that they are very simply and clearly wrong.

After reading and observing some of the threads here at the forum, I know exactly who you refer to JingoFresh, why can't you just leave the poor girl alone.

Why for the love of god do you have to nag about this, it's really annoying you know to read every other topic you commenting every thing she says, get of her back and move on.

Are you really that jealous of her title here at the forums, I'm sorry to say but with your attitude you won't be getting an expert title anytime soon as I don't see why you should deserve one at all.

Don't make topics like these please, I feel so ashamed to see things like this going on in a forum like win2008workstation, it's not a contest of who has the biggest e-penis, get serious.

Try to help people instead and have fun here, this attitude is only irritating, for all of us trying to have fun and contribute to this community.

I hope I made my point clear since I hate this kind of foolish behavior, we are adults not babies, OK!

Since I have not really been active on the forums for a while, and have been avoiding the person you are referring to after talking with other members on the forum, I can only assume you *are* that person, or a friend.

There is no jealousy or ulterior motive. It's just annoying when people have no idea what they are talking about and continue to spread FUD, and no one calls them out on it.

No more foolish than you dragging up something that the rest of us had put behind ourselves already.

Maybe one of the moderators could lock this topic, before someone else feels the need to chime in and flog this dead horse some more.

I didn't drag up this topic!

I've been ignoring the people I had a problem with.

Someone went and made a second account under another username to drudge it up. I found that frustrating and replied.

Rather than this thread being locked for going offtopic, I would actually like to see the issues I raised in the original post get addressed.

If you look closely, you'll see I was actually responding to the new guy, not you.

.....

I'm sorry Indrek, I was just in a defensive mode after reading those posts.

No problem, totally understandable.