Before more people misunderstood "KVETCH" as a person name, perhaps I should explain the meaning a little.
Kvetch actaully meant to complain and whine. This blog named "Kvetch Haven" so that I can complain a little, whine a little about life. Of course, this blog will not be solely on constant whinning and complain.
Forum - is not search engine but a channel for infomation sharing
whispered @ Thursday, July 21, 2005 by stardusz
While surfing the internet today, a friend of mine MSN me for help. He told me that he suspected that there is something wrong with his PM (Private Message) function in a local Mac Users forum as he did not seems to receive any PM after messaging some forumers in the forum. I then suggest to him that maybe he can try to PM the moderators in charge to seek for help.
We chatted on and he told me something that made my heart sank. He told me how a moderator of that forum reprimanded a new Mac user for not doing a search in the forum before posting a question on how he should go about maintaining good performance for his harddisk.
Below is a direct quote from the moderator, timgoh0, himself:
"If you had bothered to search before starting a new topic, you will find that defragmentation is quite unnecessary. But NOOOO, you have to go start a new thread and ask a question about a topic that's been covered so many times that it's starting to get stale(If topics can get stale)."
Pardon me, but there are a few questions which popped into my mind when I saw such a reply:
- what is the purpose of a forum if you want your users to run a search in order to find an answer? Isn't it true that a forum is set up to help their fellowmen in the community?
- what is the role of a moderator in a forum? Are they there to help (and if they did not know how to go about helping, at least show some guidelines or url that might be able to assist someone who run into some problem) or to shut the door to newbies who need some pointers to get started?
- It seems like this kind of unfriendly moderators mostly appear in the local scene (Singapore), I've been to other forums setup in other countries and I rarely came upon such ill-mannered moderators who think that they are some kind of god within the forum (yes, only within the forum, when you are in the real-world you are just a NOBODY), so are the moderators and some other senior forumers playing God themselves?
Has forums of the local scene has really fallen from grace? Why are Singaporeans' ugliness not spared in the cyberworld?
Forums are a place for people to share information. So, if you are not willing to share the knowledge that you have, please, step down as a moderator and allow someone better to take up the job.
Also, we got to take note that forums are not meant for chit-chatting. If what you want is to talk and rant about life, then, you should go to places that provide online chatting or IRC (Internet Relay Chat). This is something that many forum users have misinterpreted a forum for. If in doubt, check it out in at dictionary.com for the meaning of forum.
A moderator role is to ensure that discussions stay within topic and if the thread went off topic, he will either give a warning or locked the thread to prevent further straying.
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