that in the world of faceless internet a 16 or 12 yo gives you an advice? You ask for an opinion and somebody half/third/fourth the age with no experience expresses his point of view using idealistic assumptions. It happened many times when after 1-2 years of participating in the forum discussions poeple realize that indepth conversations about survival/anything were taken between a 15 yo boy and you... Now how does the validity of his point and experience stack up now? Somebody is looking for camping tips and he gets an advice from a 13 yo that never been out in the woods. Just saying....
to be perfectly honest, i think i'd rather take advice from many an intellegent twelve year old them some of the 40 year old wackos out there...
age and experience aside, while both important to many things, aren't the whole story.
a kid with a good head on his shoulders and who's mature enough to act and speak responsably goes further in my book than someone who runs off his mouth just because he's been doing the same thing for 20years and he thinks he knows everything.
sure, i've seen a lot of kids raised in todays society that are practically brainwashed into having no clue about the world around them, but i've seen just as many "adults" acting the same way [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif[/img]
Well true but lets say and I've seen it many times a newbie pops onto the board and asks a last minute advice about something. A youngster answers running his mouth from what he read, heard and saw on other postings. Newbie thanks him and goes off. Now there is a possibility that this newbie can get hurt becasue of the ill advice he got. Yes I let it go but still it is pretty mess up. I do understand that there are some 16 yo out there with more experience that some 50 yo but it is a pretty sticky situation.
[ QUOTE ] Rothrandir said:
a kid with a good head on his shoulders and who's mature enough to act and speak responsably goes further in my book than someone who runs off his mouth just because he's been doing the same thing for 20years and he thinks he knows everything.
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I couldn't agree more. I visit alot of forums, and many of them have a resident "expert" or two. Usually they're also the resident a$$hole, and discredit good advice from other people just because they don't have the same experience. As far as I'm concerned, age is irrelivant if the advice is sound. If some 12 year old comes here and starts giving crappy advice, they will quickly be corrected. I believe there are quite a few very young people here and most (if not all) could give just as good of advice as many 40 year olds.
again, i don't see how a 16year old is any more likely to spout off crap than a 50year old [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif[/img]
like i said, i've seen that type of thing happen just as often with old people as with young people.
the same could probably be said of foreigners, women, blondes and democrats [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]
I've always considered advice as being input. I never consider advice an "answer". I'll take advice from anyone, but I only act on it after I've validatated it myself.
Like some said, a young person may have a valid opinion or a store of knowledge that makes for good advice. At one time, my 9 year old son knew more about paleontology than I did.
Like others said, I (a 50 year old) may be full of .... on any particular subject.
Advice is simply someone's opinion on the subject. It may ro may not be worth much, or may be worth a lot. But that's the whole point of forums "Collective Knowledge". When you get the opinions of a large number of people, you can extrapolate a good and solid answer.
I think you can pretty much figure out who knows what and why just from the post. If you're a newbie and take advice from your first response, well, buyer beware. BUT on the other hand,...
I just blew a e2e incans reading about how it can be put in an L2. Eh, that was my fault, I was being stupid listening to dumb advice.
So yes, I'd prefer people post answers if they actually had personal experience in the area (and not just read about it). OR, if they read about it, a nice reference to the previous post would be nice. So, yes it bothers me.
Actually... this reminds me of a case on dpreview forums.
An old guy asked about advice on getting rid of a bug inside of his camera, it was a little tiny moth that he could see trapped somewhere between the eyepiece and the lense and could not get out.
He had an expensive digital camera, but was an elderly gentelman who knew only photography and not much else technology-wise.
Some punk kid was the first to reply and told him to put his camera in the microwave, and that would solve his problem.
Luckily someone else managed to reply quickly after, warning the man that that would destroy his camera. The man was very frustrated as he was about to do as he was advised had he not noticed the second post.
Who's to blame here? the young punk for being an idiot? or the old man for listening to the words of a complete stranger on the internet?
[ QUOTE ] shifty646 said:
Some punk kid was the first to reply and told him to put his camera in the microwave, and that would solve his problem.
Luckily someone else managed to reply quickly after, warning the man that that would destroy his camera. The man was very frustrated as he was about to do as he was advised had he not noticed the second post.
Who's to blame here? the young punk for being an idiot? or the old man for listening to the words of a complete stranger on the internet?
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Both is to blame, the punk for polluting the forum and the old man for not using his brain. You always have to ask yourself how/why does the advice work and what consequences it can have. Asking a follow up questions can reveal if the advice was good or just BS. If I were the old man I would have asked: "Can you explain to me how that is going to remove the bug, and how will the microwaves influence the electronics in the camera?"
[ QUOTE ] matt_j said:
that in the world of faceless internet a 16 or 12 yo gives you an advice? You ask for an opinion and somebody half/third/fourth the age with no experience expresses his point of view using idealistic assumptions. It happened many times when after 1-2 years of participating in the forum discussions poeple realize that indepth conversations about survival/anything were taken between a 15 yo boy and you... Now how does the validity of his point and experience stack up now? Somebody is looking for camping tips and he gets an advice from a 13 yo that never been out in the woods. Just saying....
Matt
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On a similar note, not long after I joined CPF, I locked horns with one of our youngsters here. He was trying to tell someone how to run his business. While I've never actually run a buisness myself, I KNOW I don't know enough about running a business to be able to advise someone else. I suggested he re-think his stance. Ummm... Oh well.... I have been closely enough involved to know there's more than meets the eye. Back to the point: all too often, the youngster thinks he knows everything.
I used to work for a man that was, for lack of a better term, a dumbass. Mind you, he wasn't completely incompetent, but on average, he tended to be a negative. It took me years to figure this to because he spoke with the authority of an older gentleman that was an expert in his field. He could talk the talk very well and blow smoke with such finesse that most didn't catch it. In the end his incompetence nearly cost me my job and cost him his position as engineering director.
I'll make a conservative estimate that this man cost the company millions of dollars in delayed projects, engineering defects, cost overruns, and new products that were never designed because the department was correcting his other screwups.
I lost a few productive years of my life because I listened to this man when my own judgdement was telling me not to.
Nowadays, I don't take so much on faith. I will ask seemingly dumb questions to ferret out the reasoning for advice so I can separate the hacks from seasoned veterans.
If I need a quick answer I'll hunt out a member who seems to be knowledable, review their posts and the responses to their posts, if the responses are positive I then review the posts of that person, I then send a pm to that person for the advise. If I want more I will then post a topic, collect information and start that process all over again.
I belong to a forum about my truck, now I have seperated myself from the majority of the population because in order to answer these questions we are seperated by a 50k truck. I know most of the members and where to seek advise when needed, here too.
I think in order to benifit greatly from a forum you have to participate long enough to get a feel for who is who.. This can be misleading sometimes as well, but for the most part, it works.
Sometimes a 12 year old has had an experience that I haven't, so their opinion is very important to me, but you have to be able to read between the lines. When scanning a topic I skip at least 2 member opinions completely, just because I know that post was there for the sole purpose of seeing their name in a thread.
Young people are hungry to learn and by nature love to show what they have learned. A common mistake of youth is to think you know more than you really do. Only experience can teach one the limits of personal knowledge, a lesson some people never learn. What's the saying, "The older I get, the less I really know."
One thing I really enjoy about CPF is the diversity of the community, including the wide variety of ages. There are very few venues for young people to join with adults and participate together as equals. Part of the challange of modern society is to figure out what to do with our youth. There was a time when children were important to the family and society for what they contributed. Now they are often seen as a liability (mischief ridden vagabonds) until they are old enough to enter the workforce. The internet, and CPF gives our kids a way to participate in a meaningful way.
I say I actually enjoy the sometimes frustration misdirection from young people, because it reminds me of where I have been and I gratefully honor my teachers in life by teaching others. Young people also offer an important perspective to many discussions. Inherent lack of experience provides a unique way of seeing. Kids especially are not hindered by prejudice and other preconcieved notions. It's refreshing for me to "see" through a youngsters eyes and try to remember what the world was like before I started filtering out more and more of what I thought to be unimportant.
[ QUOTE ] nethiker said:
No, doesn't bother me, I actually enjoy it.
Young people are hungry to learn and by nature love to show what they have learned. A common mistake of youth is to think you know more than you really do. Only experience can teach one the limits of personal knowledge, a lesson some people never learn. What's the saying, "The older I get, the less I really know."
One thing I really enjoy about CPF is the diversity of the community, including the wide variety of ages. There are very few venues for young people to join with adults and participate together as equals. Part of the challange of modern society is to figure out what to do with our youth. There was a time when children were important to the family and society for what they contributed. Now they are often seen as a liability (mischief ridden vagabonds) until they are old enough to enter the workforce. The internet, and CPF gives our kids a way to participate in a meaningful way.
I say I actually enjoy the sometimes frustration misdirection from young people, because it reminds me of where I have been and I gratefully honor my teachers in life by teaching others. Young people also offer an important perspective to many discussions. Inherent lack of experience provides a unique way of seeing. Kids especially are not hindered by prejudice and other preconcieved notions. It's refreshing for me to "see" through a youngsters eyes and try to remember what the world was like before I started filtering out more and more of what I thought to be unimportant.
Greg.
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Nicely said Greg. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Anybody who takes advice on the internet from an unknown source and assumes it is a qualified source is being very niave. In fact, a huge portion of the advice I have received or witnessed that was given face-to-face and by people who should be qualified has been useless or worse. In other words, the problem you are referring to has nothing to do with age or the internet. Everyone is responsible for vetting the advice they receive.
Use your brain on the internet! Ignore the noise, because there's a lot of it, and focus on the good bits.
Also, I see a lot of people asking questions on the net that if they had thought 3 minutes about, they wouldn't need to ask. Going to a forum has become a replacement for thinking for some folks (admittedly, myself included at times).
Does it bother you
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