Cycling UK Forum

mattsccm wrote: ↑14 Jul 2021, 9:58pm My mum would bang your heads together.

gazza_d wrote: ↑14 Jul 2021, 8:58pm And yes your replies are making me cross with your continued insinuations.

By insinuations, you seem to mean stuff I've neither written or meant. Very well, I ask you no more.

I decided to wait until this thread had run its course before I responded to the comments regarding my post.

This forum is a great resource for people with questions and problems concerning bikes and cycling. That is entirely the result of the contributions made by forum members. The forum gives people, especially those who are inexperienced, the opportunity to benefit from the knowledge and experience of many others.

Some members participate in and contribute to those threads more than others who might prefer to post in different topics or use the forum more as a chat room. I am one of the former group, and although my contribution has been fairly small compared with some other members, I know that it has often been helpful.

Composing a response to a request for help can sometimes take significant time and trouble to try to ensure that the reply is correct, precise, sufficiently comprehensive and clear. Like every other member I do it out of goodwill, and the reward is the satisfaction of helping another person.

Threads on an internet forum allow all the members to read the discussion as it develops, and to participate in that discussion. If the same request for advice is simultaneously posted on multiple forums without the original poster telling people about the threads in the other forum(s), it is almost inevitable that advice given will be duplicated across the forums.

If I spend significant time and effort responding to a request for advice, only to learn that the original poster had already received the same information in a thread on another forum, I would be annoyed and consider that the original poster had abused my goodwill and wasted my time. If it occurs again, then the more it does so, the less inclined I will probably be to reply to requests for help from new members, especially not in the form of a detailed explanation that takes time to compose. That would not much loss to the forum, but I doubt I would be the only member who would react like that.

The posting guidelines tell posters to search the forum before posting in order to check whether a subject has been discussed before and the information sought is contained in previous threads. As the guidelines state "Failing to do this may provoke cries of desperation". Although posting the same request on other forums is not mentioned in the guidelines, the result is largely the same.

Duplicated posts - the scourge of Internet Forums?

Really?? You could post the same question about tyres on the 7th of every month for a year, and you would still get replies. Quite often from the very same people!

I often wish we would make forums more efficient - look how much better Wikipedia is! - but I long ago learned that almost no-one else on the internet wants that. If they're using social media, they like posting stuff. (Or they post little, and noone notices them, of course ... )

I do... this site would be greatly enhanced by adding multi-author wikis to the open discussion forums.

Jonathan

Jdsk wrote: ↑16 Jul 2021, 1:06pm I do... this site would be greatly enhanced by adding multi-author wikis to the open discussion forums.

Jonathan

Sounds good! Drives me mad when useful threads get diverted onto B***s-bashing, or questions about something totally unrelated, or repeats of LEJOG-on-a-chopper anecdotes (riveting as they are).

Sorry, that wasn't answering the OP, was it?!?

multi-author wikis

I'm not at all clear what that might mean, but I could imagine a situation where the possibly opinionated poster with the most spare time and stamina would prevail, even on completely factual matters.

thirdcrank wrote: ↑16 Jul 2021, 1:30pm

multi-author wikis

I'm not at all clear what that might mean, but I could imagine a situation where the possibly opinionated poster with the most spare time and stamina would prevail, even on completely factual matters.

Or the biggest mob of intolerant people prevails, which is the more common outcome I've seen.

It's certainly the case that some posters don't accept the validity of others' opinions, and are pretty vehement about it.

mjr wrote: ↑16 Jul 2021, 1:40pm

thirdcrank wrote: ↑16 Jul 2021, 1:30pm

multi-author wikis

I'm not at all clear what that might mean, but I could imagine a situation where the possibly opinionated poster with the most spare time and stamina would prevail, even on completely factual matters.

Or the biggest mob of intolerant people prevails, which is the more common outcome I've seen.

Multi-author wikis support the gradual accumulation of collective knowledge. And there's a lot of that in these parts. But they make it much easier to find than when it's scattered across multiple threads as at present.

With appropriate moderation they're no more vulnerable to intolerance than discussion forums. And can be a lot less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Jonathan

I'd find it a bit more useful to see an example of a forum with this feature. Especially a cycling forum

I don't know one.

But the cycling pages on Wikipedia show the sort of thing, eg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_wheel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle

Jonathan

PS: I'd encourage everyone to edit a few Wikipedia pages on topics in which they're interested in order to get the feel of how it all works.

One thing with wiki is that it seems vulnerable to things like reputation protection. I have done a couple of small edits on things which interested me but I've never bothered with any sort of struggle.

In case anyone's confused... Wikipedia is the wonderful massive free encyclopaedia, wikis are anything that works in roughly the same way.

Jonathan

PS: How many other words of Hawaiian origin are used in common English?

One significant difference to the "online work of reference" concept is people who just post a link without summarising it. ie, Instead of a brief explanation of their point it's just the supporting material. Even worse, is starting a thread, possibly with a cryptic subject and an unexplained link to something everybody just has to be interested in. (I cringe to think how many times I may have done that before I twigged.)