This is just my opinion, but...

Considering that many people who arrive here don't have English as their first language, and considering that we were all newbies once, can I suggest a different attitude to posts that break the terms of service other than "please read the terms of service".


When someone makes what they probably think is a reasonable statement (e.g. joint stereo is bad, my gold plated CDs sound better etc etc), I think it's unfriendly and inappropriate to simply respond "please read the terms of service of HA".

I know it gets annoying answering posts like this, but maybe we could make the effort to be more polite. If you're not feeling polite, don't post! Or, make up a template response (your own, not a standard one for HA as a whole!) when you're in a good mood, and keep it handy for when the need arises!

For example, mine will be:

---

Hi xxxxxx, Welcome to Hydrogen Audio. What you've said goes against what most people on this board have found to be true. To prevent pointless arguments, we encourage people to submit audio samples (if possible) to back up claims that they make. Also, it's essential to listen to audio "blind" when judging how good it sounds. That means, if you think x sounds better than y, you need to listen to x and y a few times, without actually knowing which one you're listening to! This removes any pre-conceptions or placebo effect from your listening, and helps people to concentrate on the actual differences that are really there, rather than the ones that they expect to be there.

There are some great FAQs on this site, and a good search function. You can get to the FAQs by clicking on Forums (near the top of the page), and then selecting the general forum, or the mp3, or ... etc etc. The terms of service explain how we expect people to behave, and about the importance of "blind" testing. We usually suggest ABX tests, which you can read about here.

Many people here have used ABX tests (and many hours of work) to find out what really does sound best in terms of audio compression. We believe that psychoacoustically compressed audio (e.g. mp3) can sound as good as the original CD for most audio signals. We're always interested to find audio signals where this isn't true, because many codec developers hang out here, and many are keen to improve their codecs. A word of warning though: the recommended settings for each codec (see the FAQ) have been developed very carefully, and tested very thoroughly. If you expect to be able to change them and achieve better quality, you'll probably be disappointed. If you want to show that you have really done this, you'd better bring some audio samples where your settings really are better than the ones suggested on Hydrogen Audio, and you must have carried out an ABX test first to show that you really can hear an improvement. If you do both of these, we'll be happy to listen. If you don't, you're wasting your time and ours.

I hope you can find plenty of interest on these boards. Start with the FAQs or a relevant search, and happy reading!

Cheers,
David.
P.S. If <whatever you've claimed> turns out to be false, please do come back and tell us. We won't laugh, because we have all (and I mean all!) truly believed that we heard something, and then found out that we were imagining it. That's the reason for the terms of service.

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See - I usually use too many words :-(. But I think it's better than just "see terms of service part x.x" which is giving the wrong initial impression of the general level of help here.


I'm not "getting at anyone" - I've been guilty of short replies myself (I've posted one today!) - but I think our attitude to newbies is important. Giving them as much help as possible in as little time as possible whilst still being polite is very important. I suspect we scare many people off before they even register. If they come, read, learn, and go away happy that's OK. If they come, read, don't find what they're looking for but daren't post, then that's not good. It's very easy to search for the wrong search term and get nowhere. It's very difficult to throw off a lifetime's worth of pre-conceptions the minute to find HA.

Good suggestion? Bad suggestion?

Cheers,
David.

EDIT: fixed the grammar in the PS part + some spelling. UK English is my first (and only) language, but you wouldn't

IMHO Good suggestion.

I totally agree. However, you might want to change the "some" to "come" . You wrote a very good standard response for newbies.

I thought that FAQ is the place for such answers. Unfortunatelly, many people do not read it. Is it quite polite to send people to FAQ? If not (or if the answer in FAQ is not clear enough), may be it's a good idea to create a special place with such answers? I mean to give people link to the long answer, instead of pasting it to every new thread. What do you think?

-Eugene

You're right. Only problem is that there is no FAQ. And I mean a proper FAQ, not a sticky post hidden deep down in some random forum. There has been talk about a FAQ tha last three years or so, but nothing has happened and likely nothing will ever happen (if we extrapolate past events), and then people really should be more polite to newcomers.

I think there are better ways to meet them than:

"Read the FAQ!!" - there is no FAQ.
"Use the SEARCH!!!" - the search function is totally screwed up here.
"ABX!" - what? why? where? how?

David's response is much better. (Just fix the grammar in the PS part. It reminds me a of "all your base are belong to us")

Better replace x and y with a and b.
This will give a hint why the testing method is called ABX.

@ErikS: Doesn't the link to FAQ at every page suffice? (Near the Quick Search)

I've changed the grammar.

But I'm not saying people should copy this or point/link people to this. I'm suggesting that, if you're in the habit of jumping into newbie threads, you should probably write your own and keep it ready


Cheers,
David.

The link to FAQ is in navigation bar. May be move it near portal and make font bold? And search works just fine, if you know how to use it (it works in advanced mode).

-Eugene

Or be careful and patient and always write a new one instant

Actually, on the portal (what you get when you just navigate to http://www.hydrogenaudio.org), there is a "FAQ" link at the top right of the page (between other links like Portal, Forums, Search, etc...). And IMO it's pretty good.


I'm usually able to find what I'm looking for just fine with the search function. Can you give me some examples where the search totally screws up ?


You're right about that. "ABX" doesn't mean anything to most newcomers. Therefor, whenever somebody mentions ABX, that person should also provide a clear explanation of what it is and why it is needed.

Otherwise, good post by David.

The FAQ is good, but it's not a FAQ! Well, not like, say, Usenet newsgroups have.

The HA FAQ(s) are lists of useful threads where you can find answers to some frequently asked questions. Unfortunately, the answers don't always jump out at you. Sometimes you have to read 3 pages.

Usenet FAQs are often this kind of length in total - you can reasonably expect to sit down and read the entire FAQ. Has anyone ever tried that at HA? It's very interesting, but it doesn't get you a quick answer to most questions!


I'm not moaning or complaining about the lack of a traditional FAQ - I know it requires writing, and if I'm not willing to do it, I shouldn't complain that no one else has either. What I am doing is agreeing with ErikS - you can't always just send newbies to the FAQ.

For example, the other day we had a thread about transcoding to a higher bitrate to improve quality. You could see we were all wanting to say "Oh just go and read the FAQ (this must have been discussed before)". Do you know what? It wasn't in the FAQ!


So, I think "read the FAQ" should be avoided as a response! "It's explained <link>here</link>" is perfectly OK, and should be used instead.

(I should be careful about what I type here - I'll have to live by what I'm saying!!!!)

Cheers,
David.

For the ones consern about the lack of a FAQ/guides/info I can tell you that a wiki is being working on. The problem is that Dibrom has very little time to fix the few remaining issues that needs to be fixed before a release.

Now is see that FAQ lacks info on transcoding

But I still think that centralized place with responces to common problems is better than copy-and-pasting answers every time

-Eugene

Of course. But we must be polite when directing people to these places, and we must make sure that we are actually directing them to helpful information, rather then sending them to look for something that either does not exist, or is very difficult to find.

Sure. It does every time for me when I want to search for something. Imagine a newbie coming here and is immediately sent to look for something called ABX. He searches for ABX and tada! the first thread that comes up for me is "What are you listening to right now?" with 46 pages. What on earth does that thread have to do with ABX? It's not possible to sort the results in relevance order (for example how many times ABX occurs in the thread, or how many times per post or something.

Next try by our newbie is when he wants to download ABX... Types in "ABX download" and pushes the search button. Nothing.

I can continue with hundreds and hundreds of more examples where the serch just gives bogus, and I'm sure you can give just as many where it works. Point is that serch engines like google are way better to find relevant information than this search. It feels extremly homegrown.

You're right about the link to the FAQ. I overlooked that. But as David pointed out it is not as condensed as a FAQ should be.

Jan: I heard that about the FAQ/wiki for years now and it's still in the same state - in progress. Not that I don't appreciate your work but someone here at HA (I think even a moderator?) once said something like: "Produce first, pimp later".

In all honesty I think some sort of license agreement which is more-or-less a short and simple FAQ that takes no more than 2 to 5 minutes to read should be the first thing any new member is supposed to read and is faced with when creating an account.

1. The oldest content is little more than a year old (march 2002)..so this "for years" is not true.

2. The material we have, have been thrown into several unsuccessful projects and handled by many different ppl. It is now at HA server and almost everything we have, have been added to this wiki. When Dibrom will find time to finish what's remaining I don't know. He is very busy at the moment but we're so close now that I can't imagine that this should turn out to be another unsuccessful attempt to get our material released.


edit: dammit! I meant "can't imagine that"...

1. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....act=ST&f=2&t=10

2. I can too.

Oh yeah, because EVERYONE reads license agreements before clicking the "I Agree" button (more accurately named "Just get me past this crap to the stuff I came here for" button).

When I sign up for a forum, I expect it to be DONE in 2 minutes, not to be held up for two minutes trying to read some silly document. Of course, I also try to check FAQs and do searches to reduce my chances of saying something spectacularly stupid.

I think a good FAQ or Wiki will be a huge boon, and I hope to see lots of links to it show up in threads where newbies make mistakes. BTW, what's left to fix before releasing it? Is it technical or just material?

What about a page after creating an account saying in BIG font:

Don't forget to check Frequently Asked Questions!

Some sort of write access restriction is the only thing left before a release is possible AFAIK. Dunno is Dibrom has further plans.

Fully agree.



The word "ABX" is, in fact, too short to be used for searching. And, because it's such a popular thing, you'd find more threads referring to it, rather than explaining what it is
And you should type "ABX AND download"

-Eugene

A somewhat shorter proposal. Feel free to steal it as I'm not going to use it Tried to keep it polite...

---
Hi <newbie>,

The claim you make really isn't based on anything but your own personal opinion. Given a bit of testing, such claims often turn out to be without basis. This is why HA, as part of their Terms of Service, request that people back such claims with sound arguments. One such argument is an ABX test; it's a blind test where you to listen to clip A and clip B and find out if you can hear difference.

If you do perform such a test, feel free to report back. Maybe you discovered something new!

Don't forget to provide links to ABX software and mention LinABX.
I think that WinABX is most user-friendly.

/EDIT\ Fix0rs \EDIT/

Search for: ABX AND download

1) Terms of service (this thread)
2) Optimfrog DUALstream released
3) Normalizing MP3's with --scale instead of mp3gain
..
..
..
..
20) Compare for yourself, Vinyl vs. CD (first thread I found to contain links to pcABX etc..


It's quite simple - unless you already have the knowledge you are after, the search is almost entirely without use.

An idea is to say "use the search and check the thread : compare for yourself: vinyl & cd which contains links to ABX software" It takes a little more effort, but shows you care a little


Thanks to 2B I think for reminding me what makes a search engine useful - relavence. I have wanted to check if phpBB's next version would include a search worth using, but couldn't remember what it was I thought it needed when coming to ask a question...