One of the reason I like this board is that humbling feeling. It’s nice to have people who challenge you intellectually. Otherwise, life gets rather boring.
Nah. I da smartest guy hear, an everyting I reed makes me fell more smarter.
Mea culpa… and I have to admit that I can’t stop laughing at myself…
This place has definitely sharpened up my rhetorical skills over the past decade or so but I wouldn’t say it makes me feel stupid.
But then, nothing really makes me feel stupid, because I have an extremely inflated opinion of my own intelligence.
I only ever post when I am really, really sure, and even then I get my butt handed to me, but I try not to be a jerk, and admit when I am wrong and learn a lot.
My family has gotten to a point that “I read it on the 'Dope”, is support enough for almost any statement…
“Did I tell you about the pineapples…”
Yes–I think I have learned that I should stick to what I do worst. Shut up.
Fuck that. Dive right in. Sure you get your ass handed to you a few (more than a few) times. So what? Think of it as a Learning Experience and move on. Few people hold grudges around here. Many a time when I was bashing it out with another poster in one thread, calling each other right-up-to-the-line names and totally trashing their opinions, I was at the exact same time carrying on a perfectly polite and interesting (and educational) conversation with them in another forum on another topic. No huhu.
You learn who the experts are (Qadgop, Stranger, etc.), who the assholes are (Yo!) and move on.
[Squiggy]Hello![/Squiggy]
What I like best about it is that you can get almost any question answered. It’s like having your very own Geek Squad, but free of charge.
I already did!
LOLZ! Saw ur hedgehogs, bro!
In the real world, I’m often told that I know everything. On this board, I erase 9 out of 10 of the posts I create, mostly because when I’ve gone to check my cites, I find that I didn’t understand as well as I thought I did, or that I was outright wrong.
But hanging around here for 12 years has helped to contribute to the “knows everything” impression that I give off. The most recent person to be impressed was a friend I had dinner with this week. I explained to her the healthcare debate going on in the Supreme Court, based on discussions I’d read here. I’m also a lot less willing to spout information I’m not sure about.
My personal finding is that morons never question their own intelligence, a finding which is verified every time I make the mistake of looking at the ‘Comments’ section of any online newspaper article.
Welcome to the Straight Dope; I hope you stick around for a while.
Honestly, I don’t feel stupider, but I KNOW I’m much more ignorant than I thought I was once I realized the breadth of knowledge available among our memers.
I know what you mean. I have a Ph.D. in physics, and yet I never answer physics-related questions on GQ (which are pretty common). I’ve found that others can do it better and more clearly than I ever could.
Once in a while someone asks a question so specialized that I am truly one of the few experts, so I feel obliged to answer even though I don’t think my phrasing is very good. But that’s pretty rare.
Man, I love this place. It makes me feel like a complete idiot, which I LOVE because it gives my tormented ego a rest. In the rest of my life there’s almost zero intellectual stimulation and most people around me put me on this pedestal of “you’re so smart, you should be doing X and Y and Z…” etc that I’m never able to actually reach. Consequently, I always feel like a failure.
Here, I can tell myself that I’m not that smart after all (and if I don’t, somebody else will surely come along shortly to prove it). I’m just one insignificant voice out of many and it’s incredibly comforting knowing that there are smarter people out there doing much more work than I could ever dream of 
To the OP; don’t let it get you down. Nearly everyone has something to contribute. Simple ignorance of some facts does not equal stupidity, and this is a very good place to get ones ignorance fixed. Or at least amended. A wise man once said “The first rule of writing [or of discourse] is to have something to say and say it well”. To which I would add “Try not to be a jerk” (Seldom’s first rule of message board survival).
This is a remarkably diverse and intelligent bunch of people and I have come to greatly appreciate my association with the group. Some of them are almost frighteningly smart. There are a few jerks, but even most of the jerks have something to say, even if it’s only good for some entertainment value. For whatever it’s worth, here are a few specific admonishments that I try to remember…they apply to yours truely and may not have any value to other posters.
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Try to stay on topic
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Never argue a question of science with Blake or a point of law with
** Bricker**. -
Avoid arguing about religion with **Der Tris ** or politics with Shodan or that
**OMG a Black Conservative ** guy. (it’s not that they’re particularly wise or
anything, just that they’ll wear you down with sheer tenacity and cussedness.
You’ll never have the last word. -
Don’t try to get cute. There are some very witty folks here, but I’ve found that
when I try to make a funny it usually falls flat. I can sometimes make people
laugh in direct conversation, but my sense of humor, such as it is, doesn’t
translate well into pixels. -
Try to avoid the dreaded thread-killing post. This is when a lively discussion is
moving along nicely, sometimes for several pages, then I jump in and try to
add something…and the thread dies right there and falls off the bottom of the
page. If this happened in a real-time conversation, I’d worry about bad breath
or dandruff. When it happens here it must be something I said.
SS
Most of my thread killing posts are in my own threads, and are post #1.
Otherwise, I don’t mind much being a thread killer, as I can believe (whether it’s true or not), that I have answered the questions and objections, satisfied all parties, and been the ultimate last word on the subject.
Come to think of it, it’s never true, but it’s nice to pretend.
And a couple of times I have shut down the arguments of some of the specific people mentioned in this thread as being impossible to argue with, and I find that particularly satisfying whether or not it shuts down the entire thread.
The same rules apply here as everywhere else: if you know what you’re talking about, speak up. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, keep your mouth shut. Learn the difference and follow those two rules and everyone you meet will think you’re a genius just because you keep your mouth shut when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Also, try hard to be nice. People pay better attention to what you have to say when you treat them with respect and dignity.
Nonsense, half the fun of this board is reading the idiotic posts, and I include many of my own among them. I have to say, I really slay me sometimes.
Not to mention all the fun there is to be had while reading all the smart kids slapping down the dumb ones.