This was my response to a question about filtering v3 console messages:
The rest below have been moved from the original thread to hopefully spark off a discussion.
Please ensure you are talking about guidelines, not individual’s personalities - we all come with one baked in and we have to get along to get along.
Sorry, but that is not an helpful answer. In this case i would like to propose either be of help and point to the information on the forum or leave the question to others to be of help.
But it is what is currently defined as forum guidelines - encourage use of the resources that already exist so that people learn to help themselves rather than clutter the knowledge base with the same questions over and over again.
I’d note you didn’t take time out to either provide some in-forum links or give an answer. And you responded 2 days later - which for most of the newly opened topics would be considered a lifetime which results in lack of engagement, double or cross posting here & on Slack or topic bumping.
I believe all the moderators (averaging 2.5 at present, due to work commitments & having to have some down time from the perpetual Groundhog Day that is the forum) would welcome a considered discussion about they why’s & wherefore’s of the forum as we do seem to be answering the same old questions time & time again and we aren’t collaborating on anything - improving TTS, creating & sharing documentation and so forth.
If more contributed more frequently I could divert my time in to creating more of the resources that I’ve done so far, including tidying up & publishing various troubleshooting guides I have as WIP.
So why not start a topic on it with some suggestions on how to resolve these challenges?
Unfortunately, there is no dislike button for a message. I am sorry, but you do not get the point.
So explain it to me.
I made made my point and I will not allow myself being dragged in to a plenary discussion on a forum.
etc etc ad nauseum
“I could divert my time in to creating more of the resources that I’ve done so far, including tidying up & publishing various troubleshooting guides I have as WIP.”
Nick, if you have docs you want to publise to help people, put up or shut up about it. No-one is stopping you and you blaming others for not being able to do it is not helpful at all
…you did ask for an explanation - so there you are
From my perspective, it’s fine and overall efficient to explain that a subject has already been covered, and ask people to do their own search for that rather than doing the search for them.
Though if one already knows from memory that the conclusion of the existing coverage is “that’s not supported” it might be useful to mention that while making the recommendation to search existing threads to understand why it isn’t.
Good point. Generally do, this is just one post out of many where I didn’t, lesson learned.
You’ve explained how you see my contributions from the posts you’ve read and I’d not dispute the paraphrasing but it doesn’t speak to the frequency of use.
And that’s a key issue with this - there is a considerable difference between what I post (the majority) and what I moderate. Sometimes there is a blur. This is one of those sometimes, forum guidelines are to encourage use of forum search, which I personally agree with as well as I will explain below.
What would be useful is to explore what the community needs or wants so that expectations can be made clear. Or we can carry on as is.
Do we want a forum where people post questions without evidencing any attempt at prior learning or reading or research whilst expecting some meaningful response?
Or do we encourage people to learn the basics and use the comprehensive documentation & body of knowledge that they to actively avoid, before they resort to posting?
Or somewhere in between? Or more one way or the other?
And if the latter, how do we communicate this & encourage it?
From my perspective, looking at other forums, many of which have clear expectations of the quality of posts, coupled with my experience mentoring & training developers, I believe it will help the poster make better progress if they fill in the gaps in their knowledge so they can ask better questions to get a quicker & more accurate answer.
Why bother with the forum? I believe that LoRaWAN has enormous benefits for communities but those benefits can only be truly realised if it’s implemented with some modicum of technical fidelity. This forum is a goto place for LoRaWAN but getting started guidance is mixed in with the deeply technical and outdated devices & practises all too easily popup. It would be good to provide a better framework for those starting out.
Nick,
certainly you have given me and others really good helpful answers in the past. Thanks for that !
But on my filtering question you did not.
And yes, I did search the forum and Google and there was very little on the filtering subject. One message from April or May claimed that there was no filtering possible. First this was hard to believe that the V3 GUI be such a clusterfuck, and 2nd it was 6 months old.
Thus I dared asking the filtering question in this forum. And now we all tone it down a touch and get along … this, gentlemen, ain’t worth to turn into a pissing contest.
Cheers
hb
That’s indeed not a great situation, but you should post in the thread where the feature/deficiency is already being discussed rather than create a new one.
My 2 cents:
It’s unavoidable for people to come in and ask questions that have already been discussed before. I think those people should be gently pushed in the right direction so hopefully they can help themselves over time. There’s no use in getting angry about it.
If people come in with complaints (like “TTN v3 is too complicated!”), that’s something I cannot do anything about. I will just ignore that or simply point out that I cannot do anything about it and it’s just a fact of life they have to deal with themselves.
I believe in positive feedback, much more than negative feedback.
I really like it if I see a post where someone comes back to explain the solution to a problem they posted earlier (and explain what was wrong). This is behaviour that should be encouraged in my opinion. I will like (press the heart button on) such a post, no matter what the subject 
Ideally, I think the forum is a place where people cooperate, share solutions, etc on a kind of equal footing. Not just a place where ‘noobs’ come in and ask questions and ‘regulars’ reply (sometimes with a bit of a condescending tone). This is a much of a appeal to the newcomers as to the regulars.