Short rant because I need a break from online lectures…
It feels like almost every time I go on Facebook unicycle chat, and people have questions, there is at least one person who has absolutely no idea what he is talking about answering. This is particularily bad on technical questions (but not limited to them). For most questions, there are hundreds of people on there that can give qualified help, but somehow, people that have no idea on how things work feel the need to write nonesense. Recent example: “hubs wearing out from installing the wheel backwards”. People giving advice on tricks they can’t do. I think they are trying to help, but if you aren’t qualified, you are not helping. Instead, their plainly wrong comments are distracting from all the good advice there is. I guess Facebook as a medium rewards quantity over quality to an extreme…
To end this on a positive note: I don’t agree with everything that is written on this forum, but I think everyone on here has some experience with the things they talk about, and I appreciate that.
Wow. The title of this string caught my eye. Usually, on a forum page like this everything is very positive and focused on the subject.
However, I can relate with your frustrations from my experience on youtube comments or the like. This is my comment. I believe in the internet world where anyone and everyone can post a comment it is just like a giant electronic bathroom wall where the space for graffitti is infinite. Anything goes. Nothing is filtered. However, most people want to “share” knowledge or “express” themselves, so engaging with them is natural for us, but not everyone…
So, I personally try only to reserve my passion and detailed comments on forums like this. From my experience with unicyclist.com it is full of members who are interested and care about the sport of unicycling. If you go into other “areas” you are wide open to someone throwing out their 2 cents, someone “trolling” to just irritate you to write back, or somebody irritated with his life and want to lash out . So, if you must go on facebook page and share your experience/passion for unicycling you must approach it like a patient ambassador. Keep on.
I guess there’s plenty of people putting on suggestions and the suggestions that are echoed by the majority tend to be the more useful ones, and the not so good answers may get more ignored?
It’s a facebook world out there… nothing is ever what they say it is.
Facebook isn’t about truth, it’s about entertainment and facades… kinda like makeup and clowns.
I’ve been guilty of that on this forum…wanting to be a part of the discussion and not letting my relative lack of knowledge stop me.
I joined Facebook after some old college friends found me and encouraged me to join. That was years ago, when Facebook was brand new. It was fun at first, but within a few weeks, my online persona had turned full-asshole. I felt that all my old friends were just competing for attention, and I rose (sunk?) to the occasion by seeking negative attention. The whole experiment lasted less than a month, and I haven’t been on it since.
Some newcomers on this forum have annoyed me. Lots of enthusiasm, delusions of grandeur, can’t be bothered to use the search button, prolific new-thread-starters…then they’re gone. The same people who, if you tell them to use the search, will complain about the hundreds of matching threads they don’t have time to peruse. Hmm, why do you suppose that happens in the first place? Maybe we could assign designations to users of this forum, with “webmaster” at the top, moving all the way down to “bucket-lister” at the bottom.
Facebook is an electronic bathroom wall with unlimited space. It does the “extra work” of putting a spray can in your hands and “invites you” to just put anything you want. I stay away from it completely. It takes a few search and clicks to get to unicycle.com. Too much work for the random commenters. While I’m ranting here. Who else hates EUC(electronic unicycles), especially when they illegally ride on public sidewalks at 20mph+.
EUC (Extreme Unicycle Championships), is one of the oldest running urban unicycling competition after the World Championship. I’m not too big of a fan of that this electric balancing device uses the same acronym, but also the word “unicycle”. I think they fall more into the category of hoverboard and Segway than unicycle.
That being said I don’t have any problems with them other than the naming.
I actually find the facebook unicycle chat more engaging then the forum as I’m relatively new to unicycling and there seems to be many people around my skill level or lower there. I like to post there as it seems my experiences are more relevant but I tend to advise on general riding skills that I have experience with. I’m not mechanically knowledgeable about how bikes/uni’s work and I usually get a professional to fix problems that are out of my league so I never advise on those aspects.
I moderate a couple of unicycling groups on Facebook, and I’m sure glad I don’t moderate Unicycle Chat!
I wouldn’t go as far as saying that there’s that much stupidity on there, just plenty of riders who are inexperienced and just trying to be helpful/give themselves some purpose. Quite a lot of it is a younger generation, and I went through a similar phase of trying to help everyone (although admittedly not on Facebook) in my younger years.
Personally although I’m a member of Unicycle Chat, I tend to ignore it entirely as there’s too much chaff to sort through, preferring to stick to the far more specific technical groups.
Oof, I hope they don’t increase that number. I keep my Facebook friends around the 70 person mark, which many people find strange, but if I don’t know someone personally then they’re not really my friend, Facebook or otherwise.
I don’t either but we discussed it internally and decided not to enforce any change.
However, @finnspin, would you mind changing it yourself for something less aggressive? I’m thinking about Facebook users that come discover the forum and see this title in the first topics. That’s not very welcoming.
Renamed it to something less offensive (I think, suggestions welcome).
This was made at a time when threads were not as prominently displayed on this forum, and after correcting dangerously wrong advice on unicycle chat 3 times in a row. It does get annoying when people who clearly have no experience on something think it is better to write speculation, rather than waiting for someone qualified to answer…
And I think that Facebooks only goal being to make you come back to the platform as much as possible, rather than making good conversation happen or creating places full of good information is part of the issue. Forums are better at that.
Some issues on Facebook are that everything is made to make user post and read short messages.
The posts and input fields are tiny, and when you browse a post and its comments, it’s an infinite ocean of “click to see more”.
The search is inefficient, posts aren’t categorized. Newly added information quickly disappears into the abyss and isn’t easily available.
By design, this is way more a place to share than a place to discuss.
A “forum”, even if this word started to sounds “so 2000s” and a “boomer thing” nowadays, does the opposite.
The information is properly categorized, available regardless of its content or age, have usually an efficient search engine, and doesn’t truncate or hide textual content on purpose.
This was the main motivation when I proposed this upgrade project to Gilby: to preserve and value the vast and unique unicycle information hosted on unicycle.com (some posts are almost 30 years old!) and increase its quality on the long run.
This is random, but really, unicyclist.com is such a cool resource for people learning. Even though I didn’t sign up at the time, I spent a long time reading all the information for beginners on here. So thank you for preserving this invaluable database of unicycling knowledge!
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