Moderators, FB community

[speedfixer]

Is it OK for a moderator to just delete a negative post by someone without comment?
It was intended to be an independent comment, not particularly related to the referenced post thread.

That just happened to me.

david

[fxm]

I unlocked the original thread and therefore moved your post to put it there.

[speedfixer]

Why?

Because you realized it was wrong?
Because you got caught?

Must have been because you got caught: I see no apologies to anyone.

You don't like me, that's OK.
I called you out, but it was the another posters' thread that got locked.

What an ego!

I'm still asking the community and other moderators: is that behaviour OK?
Is this the way we do business?


Disappearing messages are like disappearing people: If you don't fight now, you soon lose so much more later.
Maybe France has a history of rolling over, but too many others of you have experiences closer to home.

Here in the USA, our news media is struggling with these issues. I didn't expect it here at out 'technical' forums.

david

[fxm]

I do not see the problem.

I moved your post (viewtopic.php?p=280820#p280820) to the thread you wanted to reply to, but which I had temporarily locked for about 10 hours.

On the other hand, please stop the insults.

[speedfixer]

Your continuing ego and arrogance displayed to everyone was the first insult.

If you say one more time "multicore cpu required for threading" I think I will shoot myself.
If you write another example for a simple keyword that requires a beginner to look up and understand threading and mutexes and dereferencing along with very obscure symbols use I think I might hunt you down. I will definitely work hard for someone else to write docs.

Oh, I suppose there was never a reason to apologize?
I would punish my child if they showed your behaviour.


My name is David.

[fxm]

It seems to me that by unlocking this thread, I thus apologized for having locked it.
But what untruths I read there for 2 days.

[speedfixer]

If it happened to you, wouldn't an apology go far to help you be patient and try to understand the other person?

A lockout means the other person's voice does not have enough merit to allow them to speak.
Do you know that much, are that certain, that what you think you are hearing is the issue?

The complaint was understanding the docs, with doubt about the truth and meaning.
Someone else chimed in with completely off topic complaints.

If that other person knows so well, ignore him: you won't change his mind.

Stick to the topic - clarity in the docs - and all should be well.

Do you NOT listen to your child when he speaks nonsense?
Be patient, listen, try to help.

Do you whip your child with every small error he makes? That went out of fashion 100 years ago, in most places.

As wise as I think I am (young at 68), I learn from my children. When I know they are wrong, I can only be patient. THEY must choose to listen. Or not. It is their choice now.

[MrSwiss]

Let it be obvious that I disagree with *fxm* and any of the associated statements ....

He (she ?) seems to misinterpet too many things at a once (in a livetime) sort of way ...

Meaning (clear and straight): I want an explicit apology ... (where I stands for the community at large)
(just reverting things, isn't the same "by a long shot")

[Roland Chastain]

@moderators

Please banish those arrogant parasites (speedfixer, MrSwiss and others)!

On any forum in the world it is not allowed to attack moderators. Otherwise the moderators are useless.

@fxm

Thank you for your invaluable work for FreeBASIC forum and documentation.

[BasicCoder2]

@moderators
Please banish those arrogant parasites (speedfixer, MrSwiss and others)!

That is a dilemma for me! MrSwiss has often replied to my posts with useful information and indeed sometimes with an exact answer when others haven't bothered to respond at all. Right now I have been rereading some posts by MrSwiss that are needed for a project I am working on.

However I would support the moderators whatever happens even if it means I get no answers to certain questions.

It is a privilege to be a member of the forum not a right.

[Lost Zergling]

"Disappearing messages are like disappearing people: If you don't fight now, you soon lose so much more later. Maybe France has a history of rolling over, but too many others of you have experiences closer to home."
Speedfixer,
fxm is right saying 'please stop the insults', don't you think so ?
Then, he apologized for having locked/moved your topic.
I'm sure fxm did not imagine this could have been subject to so sensitive missinterpretation. Sometimes, what seem insignificant for one people is very sensitive for another.
Maybe your post is politic. Please refrain. Please moderate.
On the other hand, I agree, doc is sometimes so technical, difficulty is to satisfy a wide and heterogenous audience.

[Lost Zergling]

Just coming from my past experience. When I was younger, proud of my 4 years of programming experience, I felt a bit like the mayor of the world: I worked for a start-up and I went to clients to provide training and documentation for our products in a Lotus environment. We were software solutions publishers, and since there were relatively few of us, each business or development engineer had control of the source code for the engine of our software. The prices of our services were shockingly high, and honestly, the technical level shockingly low, sometimes surprisingly efficient. Over time, my technical level improved, and I realized that my training was really poor, and it had become unbearable for me. I changed my approach and started to reverse, to explain how the underlying algorithms could be, to require my interlocutors to understand the technical fundamentals rather than a presentation of the interfaces.
As a result, I got "destroyed" by customers like $%#@. The boss had summoned me, there was no subject between us, simply the observation that I had become too technically competent on certain subjects to be able to easily do "good" intuitive training. So, after that, I went almost exclusively to the most technical training, doing a minimum. The moral of this is that there are no ideal presentations: you don't go straight to the top level, there are steps to follow. It is also for these reasons that in software publishing companies, it is generally considered that the people who write the documentation or who provide training and support (level 1 and 2), should not have too specific a level. . There is not a single documentation, because the documentation must meet different objectives: user manual, technical reference manual, training manuals. In this respect I find the work done by fxm to be incredible. I think what we are missing might be a training manual a little more "sexy", a little in the spirit of the "for dummies" collections, in which the focus would be on understanding the underlying mechanisms by simple but relevant analogies, more than technical precision.
Something to "make you want", but it's just an idea, I know it would be a lot of work, you need a specific profile, and this work doesn't interest me. But I don't think anyone could think about it, why not?

[jj2007]

Correct, Lost Zergling. But IMHO the biggest problem is that while manuals are written with the best knowledge and the best intentions, those who read them do not complain if they didn't understand something. They feel ashamed, so they don't give feedback. And that is the worst scenario, because without feedback you cannot improve.

Besides, sometimes the manual writers get feedback not from their "clients" but from the top level experts - and their feedback is often detrimental to the purpose of teaching, because they want that the manual complies 110% with the most recent ISOxxx standard, and their jargon is completely incomprehensible for a beginner.

In my experience, abstract teaching doesn't work, but simple examples do. I've tried to show some simple examples here, but it was not to everybody's taste. Not my problem because I don't need the manual, but I'm afraid beginners (remember: the B in FreeBasic) may have a rough time...

[marcov]

Besides, sometimes the manual writers get feedback not from their "clients" but from the top level experts - and their feedback is often detrimental to the purpose of teaching, because they want that the manual complies 110% with the most recent ISOxxx standard, and their jargon is completely incomprehensible for a beginner.

A reference manual has to be precise and correct, and manuals are not just for beginners.

If beginner entry is the problem, there should be more accessible docs/tutorials, not dumbing down of the manuals.

Ref manuals are usually too fragmented anyway for beginners, without much head or tail.

[Cretin Ho]

Besides, sometimes the manual writers get feedback not from their "clients" but from the top level experts - and their feedback is often detrimental to the purpose of teaching, because they want that the manual complies 110% with the most recent ISOxxx standard, and their jargon is completely incomprehensible for a beginner.

A reference manual has to be precise and correct, and manuals are not just for beginners.

If beginner entry is the problem, there should be more accessible docs/tutorials, not dumbing down of the manuals.

Ref manuals are usually too fragmented anyway for beginners, without much head or tail.

From my experience: manuals are the hardest type of documents and have most detailed information, documentations are a down to earth piece of information for both beginners and intermediate users, you could think them as reference books, and the last, tutorials, for pure beginners. I feared reading manuals most. I used to read the Free Pascal compiler's manual and I think I'm lost. I like the Wiki more, easy to read, easy to understand. But I have not really tried to learn the language and the compiler yet.