Let's move on

As I've mentioned on other threads, I REALLY like the AOPA board (I
have not tried out POA or the purple board). I agree that the
interface is not nearly as good as some Usenet clients out there
(though I just use Google Groups due to Time Warner dropping Usenet,
and their interface ain't all that great either).

The GUI of POA is cumbersome and hard to follow. It's main advantage (and
it's a big one) is that Anthony is not there!

Dudley Henriques writes:

They say this comes to all who stay on forums for any length of time.

It's possible to accept and adapt to it. The key is to concentrate on what
interests you and ignore the rest. The level of noise in most public forums
is very high and if you cannot or don't wish to separate noise from signal, it
can be very exhausting.

Mxsmanic wrote:
Dudley Henriques writes:

They say this comes to all who stay on forums for any length of time.

It's possible to accept and adapt to it. The key is to concentrate on what
interests you and ignore the rest. The level of noise in most public forums
is very high and if you cannot or don't wish to separate noise from signal, it
can be very exhausting.


True enough.


--
Dudley Henriques

terry writes:

I joined POA ( I am an Aussie also for those that dont know), and
while there is certainly no discrimination against non americans, I
find that interesting aviation discussions are few and far between
amongst the general chit chat. Its more like a social chat board than
a genuine aviation discussion group. I guess thats what you might
expect to happen when you have strict rules about how people have to
interact with each other, the friendly types stay around and become
good friends, nothing wrong with that of course but I already have
enough friends ( 3 counting my wife) and I just want somewhere to go
and talk technical stuff about flying.

Talking about serious issues on which people have strong opinions tends to
lead to arguments, and many poorly moderated forums get around this by
simplying outlawing any serious discussion. They don't do this in so many
words, but the character of the moderation is such that nothing but friendly
small talk survives.

The fact is, when people discuss conflicting and strong opinions, most rapidly
resort to personal attacks, degrading the quality of discussion. Few people
can remain objective when defending their own opinions or when addressing
other opinions with which they disagree. Social chit-chat avoids this,
although it's not very interesting. People who have opinions that they've
adopted wholesale from others (that is, opinions that they have not arrived at
through personal reflection, which makes the opinions impossible to defend)
are particularly prone to fall prey to emotion in very short order.

This is why moderated forums are relatively free of stressful flame wars, but
are also generally very boring and uninformative. Conversely, this is why
unmoderated forums can cover fairly weighty subjects, but at the price of very
high noise levels and extremely acerbic personal flame wars.

terry writes:

If I have a debate I expect the outcome to be one of 3 possibilities.

1. I have been proved wrong and I acknowledge that and appreciate the
fact that I have learned something
2. I have proved the other person wrong, and they acknowledge that
and I gain some personal satisfaction that I have helped someone, and that
perhaps in 200 or so hours of piloting an aeroplane I might have actually
learned a thing or two.
3. The debate is about something that there is no right or wrong
answer and both parties agree to disagree.

Your error is in (2), because you not only want to prove someone wrong, but
you want your ego to be stroked with an unwarranted recognition of the
questionable value of your hours of experience. Without the ego boost, you
aren't satisfied.

I occasionally show that someone is wrong about something, but anything beyond
an acknowledgement of that is superfluous to me, and even the acknowledgement
is only useful for closure and not absolutely essential.

Tim writes:

Right, and everyone here knows it. The mystery is why anyone would attempt
to prove a point one way or another with him when they know this going in,
and yet the same people do it over and over and over again.

They want to "win," not realizing that it's not a contest. Since it is not a
contest, they cannot win or lose, and so they end up frustrated.

F. Baum writes:

I am begining to think that it is just the nature of these groups.

It is human nature.

The value of POA is that Anthony isn't there and wouldn't be tolerated. He
single handedly is primarily responsible for the demise of this group.

Anthony can not ever admit that he's wrong, even when it is blatantly
obvious to those of us who actually fly.