Everything I write about applies to this message thread:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....pic=14415&st=0&

A new guy visits HA and asks for opinions on players he can try, other than Winamp which he is using now. Not only was FB2K forced on him, when he gave his own reasons for not wanting to try that software (see below) - he was called a troll by Garf, in my opinion Garf is way out of line (Garf put in the last word and closed the thread). Not only that a guy chipped in that he couldn't get the EQ working in FB2K - it was replied to with sly comments, as though the guy was somehow mentally deficient.

I would like to see Garf appologise to both people, if this is the future of HA, perhaps it is time for a new board elsewhere, where it is ok to talk about things (I for one am interested in all the players out there, what they provide, yet in that entire thread I was the only one who tried to reply on topic!).

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His reason was that he didn't want to try any software that hadn't reached the 1.0 release, relating to FB2K I can tell of my own experiance why that might be so - 2 months ago I was working on mp4 tagging - I wanted to see some FB2K tagged mp4 files, so I download the latest RC of FB, and the mp4 codec. Upon starting FB complained that the codec was the wrong version for it, so I went and got a newer version of FB, installed that and that is when problems really started to happen - FB2K wouldn't start as it complained all the plugins were a wrong version. I didn't investigate, I had spent 20 minutes on it, so went and got the mp4 codec for Winamp. Just an example...

I'm sorry, but I completely stand by what I said in that thread. If you want to convince me I behaved inappropriately, please give me some arguments.

After a quick read, all I saw was Garf being a bit rough, and the original poster saying useless arguments about how 0.x versions aren't supposed to be final. The rest seemed pretty normal to me.

True, only foobar was mentioned as an alternative, but then, HA is about quality, not necessarily about "all-in-one-jukebox" players. The comments strongly advocated foobar, but is it really childish behavior?

[edit] Also I don't see the reasons behind the original post. Such information is trivial to find. [/edit]

Did I miss something?

edit: fixed spelling

IMO the turning of this thread into off-topic (version numbering, people claiming bs, ...) was reason enough to close that thread.


I'm furthermore very frightened of such statements/questions but that´s just me being paranoid!

Heh, spoon...

Even though I haven't attented that thread, at least yet, even I was immediately aware what it was about..
Check here and make your own conclusions:
http://forums.winamp.com/member.php?action...info&userid=282

Oh, and you might want to check #nullsoft too...

Poor "new guy"..

I don't know if he was trolling, but he was being so close-minded as to be really close to be trolling. What I didn't like very much is the thread being closed so quickly. I wanted to reply too.

Typically, this sort of thing is discussed with the admins and the moderators privately.

As for the new guy, he basically had preconceptions of a piece of software and declined to try it based on those preconceptions. This would be akin to me NOT trying iTunes because I've never been impressed with software ported from the Mac. If there's one thing that can be said about this site, it would be this: The goal is to blow away all pre/mis-conceptions about audio. (Incidentally, that's was another misconception he had, that HA was about music, but I digress since Garf made this mistake as well).

Even worse, he refused to try Fb2k because it wasn't 1.0, even though it sounded like he would be willing to compare it to Winamp 5.0, which is currently still beta.

I don't know if I like Garf locking down the thread (which may have allowed for more discussion), but the warning I think was valid, especially given the last post on the first page.

<sarcastic> Web designers tend to be megalomaniac. Maybe he's frustrated because he can't code ? Or he went crazy after working for long periods on Javascript ? </sarcastic>

Holy crap, I had totally forgotten that this was the guy who flame rjamorim of being a Foobar 2000 Zealot.

If I recall his post correctly, this wasn't his problem.

If he had asked for help in activating the the equalizer in FB2K:
Firstly, he should have asked it in the Foobar2000 forums,
Secondly, I'd have gladly and non-sarcastically helped him.

I don't think we should derive, or deduce anything from a person's input in his profile page. If anyone can recall, someone used this as a personal attack on me when I was asserting facts about Musepack and ABX. What we can use as 'evidence' against anyone is the content that they put in their posts.

What ppl were attacking was his reasoning for not wanting to try foobar and it was explain to him that the version number had no relevance.
Secondly you did you see what garf saw on IRC to conclude that he was a troll.
And third: a thread is not neccesarily closed to punish someone. When it drifts off topic and nothing useful is comming out of the discussion that looks like it will turn into a flame war soon it will and should be closed.




What in the reply do you not conceive as trying to be helpful and help the poster understand the eq.?




Why is it that we have to justify a moderator's call to you all the time?
This is not the first time you have done it and it's really not appreciated. We don't have time nor do we wish to have to spend time on you because you do not accept our judgement.
You did not have the contact with this guy that garf did.



So because you mix up components compiled for different versions you conclude that the program is bad?
You copy files around windows versions too and expect them to work?
Btw.: if you download the special installer on the official site you will have most of the relevant components.

About the locking of the thread: I locked it until I could talk with THEMike on IRC. I've now done so, and the thread is reopened.

It does seem a shame to argue with someone who has Kylie's bottom in his avatar.

But he could have downloaded foobar and tested it in the time he spent explaining why he didn't even want to try it.

It was a close call whether he was trolling or not. I'd probably have given him the benefit of the doubt for a little longer, but then I've done that once too often on UseNet. As a moderator, Garf is probably more experienced at spotting this.


FooBar obviously isn't "finished" - that's true - but there are good reasons for taking a look now, even if you're looking for a "finished" piece of software. For one thing, it might show you some of the things that all these other "finished" pieces of software lack. That was his initial question "what features are out there that I don't know about".


"if this is the future of HA, perhaps it is time for a new board elsewhere"



Cheers,
David.

P.S. just noticed that there have been several replies while I was writing this - and I thought I was so quick!

Cheers,
David.

I wouldn't deduce anything other that his personality. If you look at some of his other posts, it appears he's usually quite rough and agressive. Regardless of his competence and of the software he makes/likes, I'm confident that when he posted on HA, he knew perfectly what would happen.

Seriously.. he talked with Peter several times, so why in the world would he ask for advice about what player to use ? Obviously he had all the information he needed.

How do people get so wound up about message forum's on computers?

*cough*

Speaking of being childish, you were the person to post "MP4 file renamer" news (as well as weekly spa^H^H^Hnews about dbpoweramp updates), and that got your validated news forum access removed. Perhaps it's time to cut on your posting privelages more.

Oh good...put the boot in, that is relevant. BTW I am not coming down to your level to quirp out a reply, YOU want to ban me, go ahead! Before anyone belives that rubbish, just go an look in the News Releases - for the last two months I have posted 2 news items - one per month, on a wide range or programs. Oh yes FB2K has had 2 in that time.

I will admit that the mp4 renamer was questionable, you didn't hear a quip out of me, but what I did see was lots of people with mp4 files, iTunes on the scene and no ability to import those files, so F**** you if you think I was out of line for spending X amount of my time to help those people.

I don't know, but Peter's attitude is somehow disturbing me. He always look at other people as if he was God.

I think it would have been enough to tell Spoon that he should stop posting news about every small modification in his program, but ...

spoon,

Don't you think THEMike was acting childish himself by refusing to even try an audio player simply because of the friggin' version number ?


Even though you could have saved yourself some trouble by using Case's special installer, this reaction is still much more understandable and acceptable than THEMike's behaviour. At least you gave it a try.

It seems this situation had a lot more to it than a first glance would tell.

That being said, many HA readers have demonstrated an attitude common to IT people, of which I am one.

I have seen a 'tendency' toward the following behaviors that are destructive to all of us gaining benefit from the diverse people this world offers.

1. Eliteism, I got the best stuff, and yours is crap.
2. One size fits all, this is the best, for everybody.
3. Blatant putdowns, you must be a moron, since you don't agree with me.
4. Are you the biggest noob in the universe, or just a contender for the title?

I can identify these, because I have been guilty of each myself.
I believe all HA readers would benefit from a 'kinder gentler' attitude.
Of course, for Trollers, 'off with their heads.'

well, my 0,02 €...
first of all, I think it's a good thing to be able to put the moderators under critizm, though only on a clean argumentative level.
I think I could also see where the original discussion slowly lead to an kind of trolling off topic, anti-foobar2k posting. I find garfs reactions in his posts quite reasonable. he could have anounced in his last post before closing the thread, that he may open it later on (if that was planed from the beginning).

it is just simply extremly narrow-minded (or 'sub-trolling') to lead the discussion to a weird topic of pre 1.0 apps are not worth to try etc.
I guess every developer has it's own release and naming sheme, and though 1.0 often is the first 'ready' , it does not have to be the case, therefore realy worthless to discuss.

Nothing wrong with announcing mp4 renamer in one of forums, or even in news submissions, but NOT directly in validated news. That is blatant advertising. Speaking of foobar2000 news, I didn't post them myself, other people did, and I didn't even bother validating them myself. If anyone else considers 0.7.1 news redundant (I do), I will remove that post.
Most of mods/admins agree with me here so don't bother arguing. Your behavior is being a problem here, and now you are insulting me.

Spoon,
that action was not caused by one incident but a long time concern. In fact the last time i checked (yes it is a long time ago) about 70% of your posts had the word dbpoweramp in them. If that doesn't say something about your posting habits I don't know what...
It is always nice to have developers hanging around this forum but when they mostly talk about what their product can do it does get our attention.


Edit: I seem to be unable to reproduce a search that comes up with similar result. Also the search is not easy to a make with current search tool. Also spoon's products isn't limited to dbpoweramp anymore.

Whoa, guys.... Let's not rag on Spoon because he's proud of what he's written. dBPowerAmp is the swiss-army knife of tools/players. A lot of functionality available in a given package.

Besidese, IIRC, someone would ask a question on how to do a certain task, and Spoon would often chime in saying dbPowerAmp can do this or something like it. A dbPowerAmp zealot to be sure, but no more so than the many advocates/zealots of Foobar 2000 on this board.

Spoon:
- To prevent futher foobar2000 vs dbpoweramp wars, your developer group is restored for now.
- You can post in "Validated news" again, but please don't do so. Use "news submissions" next time, just like everyone else does.
- I understand that a lot of people here have interest in your products, but such minor updates shouldn't really go to main news page. Most of their potential users will find them anyway, if posted in appropiate forum (that is one of AAC forums for AAC/MP4-related news).

I'd like to add something here.

It seems to be a recurring pattern that some of the more "vocal" users on this board tend to sympathize with some people who receive harsh responses to their posts, no matter what the content of the posts that prompted those responses were, or the general attitudes or ideas that the original poster is showing.

In a community like this, one cannot hope to control all aspects of the way discourse unfolds, but there are a few points that are important enough to try and uphold:

1. Reason and rationality in discussion.
2. Scientific aims or methods (objectivism vs subjectivism)

and, what I makes HA perhaps more valuable than other similar forums:

3. A low tolerance of nonsense and an influence towards "best of breed" software, utilities, ideas, etc.

How these points come together in some of these cases may not be pleasant to some people. For example, the user that was originally posting in this case was not being reasonable -- he refused answers to his questions, argued against something he asked for originally (as if he didn't ask for it), and gave totally irrelevant and nonsensical reasons for doing so.

Maybe some people (which don't have to do the administration work) feel that they are able to allow for infinite amounts of patience and benefit of the doubt, but this is not realisitc. Given that, and the fact that this user basically worked against points 1 and 3 that I outlined above, he received harsh responses. While it is important to "be nice" to people on these forums (this is mainly so that discussion actually continues to take place), it is more important to uphold the integrity of information, the productivity, and the overall wellbeing of this forum.

Thus, towards posters and threads like this, it is OK for them to be naturally weeded out in such a fashion. What can happen after this is that the person initatiing the originally discussion can either choose to learn from their mistakes or leave. If they are the type of person that would rather leave than realize the possible error of their ways, then chances are this is not the kind of person that we want around here anyway (people who are not open to harsh debate and change).

Hydrogenaudio is not a support forum. We have no obligation to be "accomodating" or "friendly" beyond reason. This place is meant for discussion and debate, sometimes harsh debate. This is how it takes place in the real world, and this is how it should be reflected on HA. Again there are good reasons for "being nice", as far as fostering discussion goes, but nobody here (especially the admins) owe anything to any of these new users who may happen to approach the community in the wrong way.

Having said this, the one problem that may be coming to the fore more often is dogmatism. It seems that there are some users who either appear to echo the opinions of other members blindly, but without the reason behind their words (distorting them and making them irrational). While this is not a good thing, it becomes difficult at times to affect some of these users without causing more confusion than anything else. However, for the most part, even dogmatism which follows the current "better" view of the community is frowned upon, and most of the time either other users or admins will at least say something (privately or otherwise).

The other side to this last point is that this behavior is a somewhat natural occurance of large size forum. HA, I think, does a better job at handling this than most do though.

At any rate, it appears that some people have a hard time realizing these and other points on how the environment of this forum works, and why it works. Some people prefer to always view the actions of someone in charge as unfair, yet they offer no good solution themselves or they would behave differently if they were in the position they were critiquing. Some people even just like to have a cause to rally behind even if there is no reason to their cause -- they simply like controversy, like to create problems, or like to "fight the powah!"

The bottom line here is that while perhaps the response that this original poster received was not the most eloquent, it certainly was not unfair. There is nothing "wrong" with HA, there is no great cause for alarm. Rather, it's business as usual. Get used to it or not...