What I want to now is, how did the OP get away with calling someone a smart-ass in GQ?
I found Ficer67’s last thread enlightening.
I don’t know. Maybe the mods didn’t see the report.
Stick a fork in him, he’s done.
Because on this board it’s considered a compliment. Calling someone a dumb-ass, OTOH …
We’re all asses here! Some of us are smart asses, and some of us are dumb asses.
Oh, I see now. He’s the guy who already knows everything. His mission in life is to show everyone how smart he is and how little they know. Makes perfect sense now.
I’m gonna miss him.
Whatever happened to that dude who would get into debates here and proclaim that he had “banned” posters for their arguments? I think he even had a blog where he kept a running list of the people he’d “banned”, including the date and reason. What was his name, and is he still around?
brazil84, if memory serves. Yeah, that guy had serious issues. I think he still posts from time to time.
Thanks for the link. This clears up the confusion as to why this thread was started in the first place.
This whole thread reminds me of the classic, “As a matter of fact, I am the fucking hall monitor” thread.
Don’t know if **Ficer67 **is still with us, but in case he’s still reading:
Ficer, what you have to do is pre-empt the anticipated responses in an OP like that. If you mentally anticipate that someone is going to give you a response like, “Just mentally add up the discrepancy in the PDF pages,” then mention that in your OP itself. Say, “I know that I can simply mentally add 9 pages to the page I want to search for, but is there a way to circumvent that so I can actually get to page 141 directly simply by typing in “141” instead of having to do mental-math gymnastics?”
Otherwise you end up with the frustrating situation **TokyoBayer **highlighted, where you say “80% of people will suggest Thing X and I know Thing X but want a solution other than Thing X” and people will give you Thing X.
I understand getting frustrated by the snarky responses, but keep in mind it’s why there are so many people available to provide helpful answers on a huge variety of topics. That entertainment value is part of the reason people hang around. If things were more cut-and-dry, then people would drift away to places which provided more entertainment. Instead of being able to ask any question on any topic in GQ, you would have to go to an IT board to ask PDF questions, biology forum to ask biology question, physics board to ask a physics question, etc.
I don’t think you quite understand the utility of a message board like this. It exists only to serve my needs. Screw everybody else who might want to read it casually for any reason other than to respond to me, in the way that I deem is most helpful.
As well as clarifies that thread. Now we see why he believes everyone in the world is mistreating him.
This is a clever but kind reply, from which Ficer could really learn something.
On the other hand, I don’t think ridiculing Ficer’s approach for the rest of the thread is an intelligent, mature, or effective way to fight ignorance.
Be that as it may, I think that mockery or sarcasm in such threads may also discourage posters from participating or contributing as well. If someone has a potentially embarrassing or sensitive question that they want to ask in GQ, the knowledge that they may not get serious responses, but simply knifing mockery may stifle them. I don’t think the OP’s question about PDFs fits that description, but GQ ought to be a forum in which people can ask any factual question they want, and get a serious, factual response.
He started it. 
But GQ is already that forum, isn’t it? Humorous replies are only allowed after the question has been factually answered. And Ficer67 incorrectly claimed that excavating (for a mind) was being a smartass when he gave a serious answer to the question.
I agree that **excavating **wasn’t being a smartass, he was only given the only factual answer he could give. But as for the “humor is allowed after the factual answer is given,” I don’t think that helps. Suppose someone has a question, “Why do I get so many yeast infections” or “why is one of my testicles so much larger than the other,” then the knowledge that they’ll get a factual answer, but then *thereafter *be subjected to subsequent teasing and mockery is still a deterrent to their asking what’s on their mind.