New
#21
Well, the fact the thread has been removed suggests the mods are taking your complaint seriously, which is as it should be.
I've found the best defence against these ungrateful people is to just walk away from the thread and let them stew in their own little world.
I bet they've got no friends in the outside world and just use the keyboard as a weapon to upset others.
Your help is exemplary.
Take it from one who had a few stalkers and enough lazy, rude OP's to spawn some of the longest vent threads seen here: Our work here stands or falls on its own strength without regard to what others do - only excepting our reaction to it.
We are after all in the very best run Tech Forums in the world. Trash gets emptied fast.
Greg, I really appreciate your comment. And I definitely agree that these forums by far have the best people on them helping. One of the things that PattiChati said was how kind we are and how gently we put things. Credit for that has to go to the moderators for making sure there are good people on here, and credit also has to go to the users for being patient and understanding with the various people with different backgrounds who seek help on these forums.
Remember too that while most here are indeed "kind and gentle" sometimes we have bad days or are not in a good mood, so we have to decide if we're going to help a dozen users fix their problems while being less than cheerful - perhaps just businesslike and blunt. Not everyone can be cheerful every day.
I once was concerned that I didn't welcome and trade niceties with OP's and whether it made me seem like a jerk. I even discussed this with Shawn and various mentors here, explaining that when I open a post to reply I may have ten steps in my head already being sorted into order, that just to put them down succinctly and coherently takes every ounce of concentration - I literally don't have a single extra breath for salutations. If I go back in to edit pleasantries into the text it seems forced and phony. So I settle for strictly business, saving niceties for interaction with colleagues and if I can take a breath in the thread.
So much of the partitioning and OS rescue steps are high wire without a net. We've yet to lose a patient but there have been close calls that usually fall to OP sloth, and there is occasionally cross-chat in a thread that can throw things into jeopardy. Sometimes you have to be blunt to focus attention, that we are no longer in rehearsal. There isn't a lot of time for making nice until it's over. Thankfully we're not judged by how sweet we are.
Yeah, I would say I am pretty business like in my approach, as well. Most of my pleasantries are within that construct at least in the beginning. There are some users I get to know during the course of helping and that lends to a better experience on both sides, I think, as I am more apt to go out of my way to help those people. It is difficult to always have pleasantries when spreading oneself across many threads with many different problems to sort out.
I also understand that everyone has bad days. I've had one today. Trying to turn it around now.
I'm like that too, possibly because I come from a time when people didn't use each others christian names on first contact etc. If I can help, or try and help, it's doing something towards the points that have been posed.
Time has taught me to choose friends carefully, but treat everyone politely.