# Snarky



## oldmanmac (Oct 18, 2010)

Just happened to be browsing the home page and reading some of the comments posted by long time members.Some of you are really snarky when it comes to newbies.Give people a chance, they are coming here to get advice because they don't know what to do,not to have their butt jumped because they made a mistake! sad thing is most of this is coming from the heavy posters,the ones that should know better. I'm retired but work as a CSR part time.If I ever spoke to a customer the way I've seen some of these OP's treated,I'd be fired in a heartbeat.I used to like this site for its general civility but now,not so much. just thought I'd add my thoughts.


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## Cheryl (Oct 19, 2010)

Service with a smile is sometimes hard to do when the poster is asking a question that was just answered three posts down. We have also found that some of the questions asked is just a set up for a spammer to cut in and give a speech for a program or a site. Or the poster doesn&#8217;t give enough information for us to help and wonders why there is no response. And a bigger problem is that our newbies don&#8217;t read the board rules or the forum section rules. Triplicate posts do not get a faster answer, just smart aleck ones. 

Of course we have some members who seem &#8216;snarky&#8217;. But that is what makes the world go round. If you think a response is in poor taste, you should let the moderators know.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Oct 19, 2010)

Agreed.

We're all volunteers here, and no one's getting paid to answer questions with a smile.

While I try not to be too snarky with my answers, I definitely don't sugar coat them.  You ask a question, you get a straightforward answer.  If you want "pretty please" and "thank you" and "have a wonderful, bright day," I'm not your man... but if you want to know why your Airport Extreme isn't working, I'll tell you why in no uncertain terms (without being rude).

Sometimes snarkiness is used as a learning tool -- I tend to use a lot of metaphors in my answers, which I believe helps non-technical people relate their computer questions to events and circumstances they may understand from other areas of life, such as:

1) "I don't have my OS X install CDs anymore..." gets answered with "You wouldn't lose the keys to your car, why lose the keys (CDs) to your computer?"

2) "My computer won't work.  What's wrong with it?" gets answered with "If you called a mechanic on the phone and said, 'My car won't work... what exactly is wrong with it and how much will it cost to fix it?' you'd either get dead silence on the other end, or a mechanic that explains unkindly that you haven't given NEARLY enough information to even warrant a response."

Hopefully those things educate the poster into realizing that we're not mind-readers and that they should think through their questions before posting them (after all, we think through our answers before answering... for the most part!).  No one's going to do anything for anyone else, here or anywhere else in life... it is up to you to be clear, concise, and specific about what you want, and that's something that should not have to be taught to people.  I'll typically gloss over or give a one-liner to questions posed that:

1) Are written with horrible grammar and/or spelling.  Not everyone is a literary genius, but if your post is sixteen lines long, all in one paragraph, all lowercase, missing periods, commas, and appropriate grammatical marks, and simply runs on and on, well... explain your problem to someone else and have THEM type it for you.  Unless you can communicate your problem to us, we cannot help.  I won't make you feel bad about having poor grammar skills, but you should fully realize your capabilities and take the appropriate steps in order to construct a readable query.  Hey, I can't understand the terminology of the stock market all that well, so I'll be the first to admit it, I won't pretend to know it, and I'll certainly seek help from someone more knowledgeable than I if I needed to communicate to someone about it.  I'm old school: learn proper grammar and spelling.  It's harder for some people than others, but that's life.  I had a hell of a time with statistics while others breezed through it.  Boo hoo.

2) Have spam links in the query... like Cheryl said, forums are spam-bait where spammers come to push their links and increase their Google scores.  We get a lot of that.  If you sound like a spammer (posting unrelated ideas into a thread, or including links to web design companies, off-shore cell phone businesses, etc.), more than likely you'll get crickets chirping or a firm slap on the wrist, and, in my case, I'll deduct from your reputation as well.

3) Ramble on and on... it's always better to give too much information than too little, but sometimes, and this goes hand-in-hand with point (1) here, people go overboard.  State your problem, give the information clearly, and await an answer.  I'm all about efficiency.  I don't know you, I don't care to know you (unless you're in my city, otherwise our paths will never cross), and the whole point of this place is to answer questions, not make lifelong friends/penpals.  Save the life story for your cocktail party at the end of the week -- we're here to get down to business, not talk about your 17-year-old drugged-out son and how he deleted your crappy collection of recipes in Word.

Just my buck-o-nine (thought that was a little more than $0.02).


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## Giaguara (Oct 19, 2010)

I think Jeff nailed most of the reasons (again).

However, if there are some examples of going too far, hit the magic button (even if in doubt) and let the mods know. It doesn't take long to have a look and see. 

Same goes for those spambots digging up all the 3-4 years old threads about syncing whatever Mac or PC to their iPod or back with their magic-solve-it-all software that they end up posting in most of their posts while the rest are fillers. Sometimes it would be just nice to ask _are you a man or a bot?_ If it's a clear bot (or botman) then I don't see much harm telling them why their presence isn't going to bring them good karma here or elsewhere. 

And sometimes it's that one paragraph without punctuation, with a spelling and grammar that gives migraine (and not the type of spelling that shows a different first language) trying to read it past the first three lines. Or continuing the post into something unrelated (Mac OS X Some Major Release Bugs and Something Something when it's a pebkac and isn't even in that Major Release). Etc etc...


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## Doloresy (Jan 10, 2011)

well...I am a new to here..does anyone snarky to me??it is terrible...


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