A message to the entitled members of this community.

There are a lot of people here working hard to create these plugins for their own servers, spending their time writing code, writing documentation, answering questions that may not have been answered by their documentation, and releasing the binaries to share with the rest of the community. They each have their own reasons for releasing them, to get feedback, sharing their code in the spirit of open source, for some recognition from the community for their hard work, they expect donations, or maybe just because they want to share.

I still choose very carefully on when I take these talented developers and server operators time and would feel like a complete idiot making comments like "I don't want to read the thread, just answer the question", "I will consider using your plugin if you add whatever to it for me." (as if they get some benefit from you using it.), "The author of the plugin should write a faq to teach me things documented elsewhere unrelated to this plugin." and one of my all time favorite demands, "Make a video so I don't have to read the instructions."

Now we all realize that many of you are not yet mature functional humans who have jobs, or money to donate to support the plugins you are using.. but please, the least you can do is give a little effort. These disruptions will continue to occur because it is very hard not to speak your mind when you are reading these posts by lazy self entitled little brats who really need to get their heads screwed on straight and drop the immature attitude that you are somehow owed something from the rest of us.

At the very least you should read the latest information in the last 5 pages of a support thread to see if your question has been recently asked, and then perform a quick search. You may still be met with annoyance by someone if the question had been answered repeatedly, but you will at least know that you tried, and for me.. thats good enough.

 

That's a load of text... but what are you trying to tell, get people donate more?

 

Not exactly... I'll go back and make it easier to understand.

I wrote that in a plugin support thread and decided to move it here and replace it with a link. In hopes of redirecting an OT flame war that was starting. See this link.

http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/me...rs-guards-quests-coming-soon-493.7173/page-11

If you spend any amount of time reading support threads you will find a lot of people who somehow think they shouldn't have to read a thread in order to find an answer, sometimes when the same question they just asked was asked 2 posts above theirs, and answered in the previous post. I sometimes get annoyed at the veiled demands made by people who are trying to shortcut doing the slightest amount of research to answer their own questions. I think people would get more support in their problems if they gave the impression that they tried to find the answer instead of trying to defend why its someone elses fault that they were unable to find it themselves.

But plugin dev's do like donations too... so yeah they should.

 

I know the feeling, man. I've learned to ignore these people a long time ago. I think most of them are about 14 years old wanting their own fancy minecraft server on their parents Windows desktop.

That said, I've added a donate button to my signature, I didn't know people actually did that I certainly don't expect them to.

 

If only such truth in words would come across better... the sad part is, those who NEED to read it, will not even think twice about reading past the first sentence... they MAY read the bold stuff, and see "YEah! i want you to make vidios and stff" ... maybe if plugin makers took a stand and made a standard for how to deal with complaining nubs, things would get better

 

This is exactly how I feel. Thanks for posting! Hopefully at least a few people will read this and learn from it. I think an Admin should pin this thread so more will read it.

 

I agree completely
Unfortunately. The ones that are doing it don't read the thread there in. So the chances of them reading this is even less likely.

 

tldr, could you "Make a video so I don't have to read" all that?
But seriously: This post should be on the front fkn page of the website.

 

I agree that those self entitled people should remove their head from their ass and come to realize everyone on these forums is here for free, donating their time.

However, that being said, I've seen an increase of rude, shitty remarks given to people on this site. This will end now - and I will be giving infractions for that conduct. Other mods will be doing the same.

A newb posting the same question that has been answered 100 times doesn't warrant that person getting a rude/shitty response. Often, just linking those people to the FAQ's and Wiki's can be enough, but those people were too frustrated or angry to look. Everyone needs to start off somewhere - todays newbs could be tomorrow's Bukkit experts.

That being said, you in no way have to entertain someone who refuses to read instructions, and demands fixes. Those posts can be reported just like the reports against posts from people who are rude or abusive.

Does this seem like a fair compromise to the community? Both rude/abusive members, and entitled assholes get curbed equally.

 

...I'm going to hate myself for this...

I disagree. reporting the post is going to have the same negative effect on the community that posting "you a damn idiot" will. I saw a post a while back that sums this up I think.

I feel that reporting a person who asks a noob question will have the same effect since they know they were reported for it and that will put them on the defensive. I'd rather see a mod gently refer them to the stickies and then lock the thread.

just my input.

 

So many illiterates that it's not even funny. Laziness coupled by ignorance is the deadliest combination when it comes to running servers.

 

I read that post in direct relation to people posting on the Website Feedback forum for getting Bukkit support. Good point though.

I do not mean to say that someone should report a noob for asking a noob question. They should only be reported if the noob has had his question answered, but refuses to listen, or spams up a post (or forum) with the same question asked over and over again.

Of course, good judgement should be used in both cases. A person suggesting to that the OP read the manual is fine, but calling him a stupid jackass is not. Same as a noob asking for help on a question answered a million times is fine, but a noob demanding fixes to a problem he caused, and bashing the devs/people helping for not fixing the problem for them is not.

 

That part I agree with in principal, but I worry about the frustrated dev/community member making the judgment call - I think that should be in the Mod realm. If the site allowed us to report something silently I would be all for it.

For example, there are (at writing) 2 posts on page 1 that come to mind. I have almost replied 4 times... but I just can't find a nice way to say "your a noob - give me more info and stop yelling". What ends up happening is that these posts get ignored. That doesn't help the yelling noob and it doesn't help the searching noob that finds the thread some yelling noob started with the same problem. Obviously there is a point when the yelling noob crosses a definite line: personal attacks, racist comments, excessive swearing... but if they are just frustrated and demanding I would rather help them learn how to function in a community than to shut them out and/or up as well as leave a search trail of both "here's how you fix that" and "here is how we would like you to behave around here" in that posting.

Actually, what are the odds on us getting a "silent report" or "how I stopped hatin' and learned to redirect the noob to the noobsquad" button?

 

one thing that could help preventing people asking the same questions, is having the ability to search within a thread.. some of these threads are HUGE.

 

As far as I am aware, you can report a post and it doesn't show up anywhere except to us mods.

Edit: I just reported my own post. I don't see anything visible showing that I've done that.

 

That's really odd, same for me. I am very sure I have seen many posts with a red "reported" box under them, and who reported the post was in that box....

edit: I'm looking for one now.
edit edit: bah ignore me... somehow my aging brain converted a mod infraction to a reported tag. I retract my reservations and fully agree with reporting problem posts. sry, tnt, for any confusion