Condescension at its finest here. I have never seen a doper go so apeshit over himself in a GQ thread before. In this thread there was a good discussion about boats not tipping over which I found very interesting. Several people who seem very intelligent made some good guesses based on their knowledge.
sailor was already in the thread and was rather upset with these folks for not understanding what he was saying or not agreeing with him. He may as well have said “You stupid assholes. How fucking dumb can you be? You should do the world a favor and go climb into a creamator and set the temp to “melt”.”
Maybe SDMB should add an “Ask sailor” forum to the board. We can all swing by there when we want the right answers to questions instead of half assed retardedness like what was spewing out of other posters mouths in that thread.
I was shocked to see this kind of behavior from what was one of my favorite posters. I like to read sailors posts because he is very smart about engineering type things and I am an undergrad engineer and learn alot from his posts. But he already knows he is smart apparently, and he will let you know it. He said some very assholish things to several people in that thread. I actually thought some of that doesn’t fly in GQ, but maybe it does once you break the 5K post barrier.
Hopefully I will never have to work for you, or someone like you, because I’ll bet you have a high turnover rate with your junior engineers due to your lack of tact and your assholiness.
I don’t think he acted that bad. He just seemed a little irritated that people kept repeating a myth that he was trying to debunk. He also admitted that there were a few things that he didn’t even understand so he certainly wasn’t trying to place himself on a pedastal above the rest of the teeming millions.
In any regards, he certainly didn’t call anyone a stupid asshole and rest assured that he would’ve been reprimanded if he had. The moderators have demonstrated time and time again that post count is irrelevant to them. If you screw up enough in their eyes, you’re gone (Satan, for example, had passed the “5k post barrier” IIRC.)
Being human makes it ok for you to act like an ass? I am gonna have to remember that one for when I really act like a jackass.
I admire sailors intellect, its just a downer when someone acts all superior like that when they are not proked. Hopefully I will be as smart as him someday, but hopefully not at the expense of good manners.
He might’ve just had a bad day or maybe he didn’t even realize he was acting abrasive. I definately didn’t see any intentional harmful intent in his posts.
You obviously lack comprehension. I was upset by people posting drivel which had already been addressed in the thread several times and which had been settled and they just refused to read the thread and expected me to go all over it again. I spent some hours explaining it and doing the drawings I posted and some one wants me to go over it again, and again and again just because they can’t be bothered to read the fucking thread? I don’t think so. If you arrive in a thread like that the least you can do is read it before you post anything but very especially if you are posting misinformation which has already been addressed. And when you are told that was already dealt with, the answer should not be “well, explain it to me again because I can’t be bothered to read the thread”.
After several people have done the same thing I have a right to be irritated. They are just wasting everyybody’s time instead of letting the thread advance. Yes, I expressed my irritation and refised to go over the entire thing again. So sue me. I did not insult anyone.
That is a lie. A big lie. You are making that up. If anyone was offended they could have said it and I would have dealt with them. I did not break any rules and you seem to be more irritated than the posters in question who I think can speak for themselves. What’s it to you? I will be glad to discuss it with those posters but this is none of your business. I normally do not look for confrontations but since you asked for it: You are the asshole for starting this thread. Now leave me alone and go back to playing with your pizzle and making your palms stinky and hairy.
This is happening more and more often lately. And it’s not one bit excusable by someone saying things along the line of “I don’t know anything about boats, but it seems to me they would use Astro-Glide as ballast…” or in the case of what irritates me, “a lot of the electricity in the US comes from oil”. :mad: Even when you correct people and give cites as links, they either ignore you, or never return. GQ is not the place for padding post-counts, nor is it the free-fire zone for the wandering idiot. Seeing people pissing in the pool of knowledge can really steam your hams, and sometimes this carries over into a general air of frustration and short-temperedness. I get this too, and used to be much worse at it.
sailor goes quite out of his way to help others, and will do things such as design simple circuits and diagram how things work for you on his own time, if you need help. He helped save my ass by designing a simple (for him) DC amplifier circuit for me so I could finish building a new thermostat.
However…sailor, my man, my homey-G…you went a bit over-the-top in that thread. Yes, people weren’t agreeing or weren’t listening to you, but they also seemed to be honestly confused. Perhaps they weren’t expressing it well, and seemed to be not reading what you have to say nor viewing your drawings - but I don’t know if that was the case for most people, and they seemed honestly confused. Hell, I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying, even though I do see your technical points (of course, I’m also really busy with a suck-ass feedwater heater problem too, so I am distracted…).
In other words - I don’t think some people were rejecting what you were saying out of obstinance, I think they just couldn’t grasp it that easily, and were falling back on the simpler (to them) or “visually obvious” explanation. I didn’t see any evidence of attitudes or actions like your old Solar Power Arch-nemesis who you (and I) normally battle with…anyhow. You’re a very smart guy with a lot of education and experience, and a lot of people are not your contemporaries. Being a good teacher means having a little more patience and repeating yourself, sometimes ad nauseum, until the figurative lightbulbs turn on.
Anyhow. You know you and me are cool. I didn’t want to even say anything, but I think you were either having a really bad night, or else perhaps not seeing that others, well - weren’t seeing.
But that was part of the problem. For the most part, GQ is not the Forum for making “good guesses” - it’s the Forum for asking questions and discussing answers. Some answers are not simple, and need expansion and some discussion. But guesses are not what GQ should be about, unless something is truly a mystery that cannot be easily scientifically or factually solved (like the Ark of the Covenant thread, for example), or unless the guesses are meant to give the OP some possible avenues of investigation. I’m not certain what went on in that thread qualifies, but that’s just IMO.
If the economy stays like it is for the Engineering field, you won’t have that luxury. It’s a whole lot worse than the 1993 Engineering Slump.
Well, actually, in GQ you are allowed to express your annoyance with a poster’s seeming lack of comprehension, as long as you don’t phrase it as direct personal insults.
Right: “Why can’t you understand this?”
Wrong: “You are stupid.”
Right: “I am tired of having to explain this over and over again to someone who apparently isn’t paying attention.”
Wrong: “You dumb fuck, why don’t you pay attention to me when I’m talking to you?”
Right: “Go back and read the whole thread.”
Wrong: “Go back and read the whole thread, asshole.”
I have, here and there, and it’s always for the same reason–the expert frustrated by someone’s baffling inability to understand what he’s explaining.
I thought Sailor did a pretty good job of keeping his temper under control, especially his preliminary reaction to the OP’s referring to ships as “falling over”.
But he went ahead and helpfully addressed the OP, and, actually, he elaborated on the answer that Johnny had already given–“ballast”–and personally I thought the thread was over, “question asked and answered”.
Anthracite, I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with me but that is not what happened. What happened is that I, preempting what I knew would come, say: there is a widespread misconception that the CG needs to be below the CB. And I go on to prove this is not the case. Spending time and effort in doing so. At this point I have no problem with anyone coming in and saying “having read your earlier posts I think you are mistaken and here are my reasons”. What happened is that Poster A comes in and, not having bothered to read anything says “The answer to the OP is that the CG needs to be below the CB”. So I tell him to please read the thread because that issue has been resolved. Then Poster B comes in and does exactly the same thing. Then poster C does the same thing. Wouldn’t you be irritated? So, in my irritation I said:
Is that so terrible?
As for having a boss like me… Try doing the same at work. Try going to your boss and proposing something which has been proposed three times before and rejected and you are supposed to know about it. See how kindly your boss appreciates this waste of his time.
This thread ought to be about people who do not bother reading what’s already been said and barge into the thread with a simple solution to a complex problem. If you do that and on top of it your answer is wrong, you better be prepared to put up with some shit.
It’s happened in other threads and I generally ignore the idiots. It happened recently when I said you could not see a geostationary satelite with the naked eye and some idiot posted a really stupid retort which was wrong. I just ignored it because the thread made it clear he was wrong and there was no use getting into a pissing match in that thread.
'But when you get a stream of people, one after another, just cluttering the thread with garbage just because they could not be bothered to read what’s going on, then they deserve to be called on their poor manners. I do not think I was out of line at all.
