Standards of the forum regarding preparatory research

Jubrail · Mon Jul 04, 2005 3:20 pm

I have seen a good number of posts asking for help that could have been rendered either unnecessary or much more educated had the poster done some research first. For instance, two almost identical posts asking why there was so little information on the synthesis of pcp and in the other case cocaine. Well, the Rhodium archive and the Hive files are filled with information on this. Beagle alone contributed great research to both of these syntheses. In any case, is Synthetikal's policy to not put an emphasis on the requirement that a poster educate his or herself prior to posting or is it simply a lack of an obvious notice about this? Or is it simply that, because this is not the Hive and Synthetikal seems a bit more about kindness to one another, users don't like saying UTFSE?

Please no one take this the wrong way. Synthetikal's picking up the torch is wonderful, it is just annoying to see these posts. It's like sitting in a University course and having someone ask banal questions that all could have been answered had the student been keeping up with the reading.

stratosphere · Mon Jul 04, 2005 4:09 pm

i hate saying "but on the hive things were this way", and the majority of the posts here are worthwhile but i do notice less moderator involvment in the forms here, and wonder if in the long run this could be detrimental in retaining and attracting members who have the most to contribute.

as an example there are many posts in the phenethylamine board that probobly belong in the misc stimulant board, and then there are the occasional posts that are for the lack of a better discription garbage and ive not seen a moderator take any action.

granted im sure we all agree that this should be a form that has something to offer for everyone from newbees to very experienced chemists, but it would be nice to see some standards enforced to insure the quality of discussion remains high.

joe_aldehyde · huxleys associate

i agree with both of you, the mods need to be more rigorous when it comes to posts like you mentioned. i am being utterly annoyed by them, and i dare to say that they are very detrimental to attraction of more knowledgeable scientists.
it should be clear to everyone that books are for basics and forums like these are to elaborate on the details.

primathon · modified

More often than not (at least in my case), it's simply a matter of whether or not I happen to read the thread in question. If you think that a thread should be moved, feel free to shoot me a PM explaining the situation, and I'll get it taken care of. Do a good job and show me you're on top of things, and you can probably be a mod if you'd like.

In regards to why we don't hear a lot more UTFSE (which I agree we need more of), I think it boils down to one simple factor: Our search function, the one that's built into phpBB, sucks donkey cock. It's on my list of things to get taken care of, but that's at least a few days worth of work to get that fucker straightened out. Try it out if you don't believe me. I'm also working on getting a post rating system in place, where users can rate a post as useful, offending, whatever, and the search will take that stuff into consideration; e.g. a higher rated post will appear closer to the top in the results.

joe_aldehyde · huxleys associate

very nice, primathon. regarding mod status, you sure remember my commitment in removing our ever-lying dear indoleamine (this german fella was also a well-known user at the hive, named armageddon). you might see from my previous posts that i am mostly interested in making this place attractive for the more knowledgeable scientists amongst us. but anyways i thought there already are mods for each section? maybe they need some soft kicking in their butts to take their jobs a bit more seriously. will help a great deal for sure!

primathon · modified

Feel free to kick softly.

Jubrail · Tue Jul 12, 2005 1:33 pm

In any case, thanks for doing all this primathon.