Peterff wrote:
That is true. Perhaps for many reasons, some good, or well intended, some not so. One thing that would help is if people considered whether they actually knew anything about the topic in hand before responding. Trying to be 'kind' or 'helpful' while demonstrating ignorance of a topic or question is neither kind nor helpful.
This happens a lot in the brand discussions. Comments such as "I don't know about this but as a long time <brand> user, I think this might possibly be what you need..." seldom have any value. I do know quite a lot about Canon equipment, Alan Myers (Amfoto1) knows a lot more and is very generous with his contributions, very occasionally he makes a mistake, but they are very few and far between. I don't know that much about Nikon, Pentax, Sony, or mirrorless cameras so generally try to avoid commenting on specifics.
Then there are the discussions about jpeg versus raw formats. I find it quite amazing how many people express strong opinions while demonstrating considerable ignorance about the topic. It is more complicated than some people think, yet less complicated than some of those same people realize. Again some people try to help, and in doing so proliferate misinformation. That does not help anybody achieve understanding, no matter how well intended it is.
Then there are the computer discussions where we have some very well informed individuals, but many that have very limited expertise, yet they happily give uninformed advice.
Conversations wander, and a discussion forum is about conversations, UHH is not strictly a technical support site, so off topic things can sometimes be valuable, or at least entertaining. However, it is always possible to keep things civil, even if the topic is contentious.
As a former colleague once said in response to the comment, "You Southern women are so nice.", she just shot the guy down with "Honey, we ain't always nice, but we're always polite!"
That is true. Perhaps for many reasons, some good... (
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I agree with you. It's like I said when the topic is very technical it stays on target -- the problem is that there are many topics that are "subjective" and then it just gets down to people's opinions, and then some people get really emotional about their opinions. It's usually all the brand discussions, like Camera models, What Post Processing software to use, What brand of computer to use, etc... Many people get really emotional about their brands. Nothing wrong with that. The one thing about subjective topics, is that there really are no wrong or right answers.