How not to join a community
Recently, there was a bit of spat on Experts-Exchange. The other party involved has been good enough to not blog on the details, and as a courtesy, I don't intend on doing that either.
Suffice to say, it was a long time coming, and raised an interesting discussion on what you should and shouldn't do when joining a community, so here it is;
- Obey the rules. There are thousands of ways to help people in the community - each has their own set of rules. Don't like one sites rules? Go somewhere else. Daniel Petri's forums are renowned for Daniel himself not dealing with stupidity, and why should he? Experts-Exchange's rules are probably middle of the road, and then there is the wild west of the newsgroups. The point is, the rules are the rules - if you do not have the raw intestinal fortitude to work at changing them by committing more time, then you need to obey them or go elsewhere.
- Respect the janitors. All sites have admin staff - they are not the police of the site that people think, actually being a Zone Advisor on EE, I can tell you it is far more akin to being a cleaner at an average office. Generally it is tidy, and just needs a bit of a dust, other times someone leaves a nightmare situation for you in the toilets. There is no glory, and the satisfaction you get from it is the crap kind that makes you feel like you are making the difference, but you realise it is just a drop in the ocean.
- Actually, respect everyone! You might be good at what you do, we are happy for you, but skill is easily overshadowed by arrogance and narcissism. I know some really, really bright people that are arrogant as hell, but they find a balance. Arrogance and respect for those around you are not totally incompatible. For example, I have no time for what we call "Google Monkeys". People who have no idea, but represent themselves as an expert and fill in their vacuum of knowledge by just googling your question and spamming you with links. EE has a lot of these, in fact, some are right up near the top of the hall of fame, and have been awarded MVPs for it. However, I deal with it - I will either ask them about, or offer to help them in a better way to post. Abusing people asking for help because you think they are stupid is really wrong. I mean, I absolutely hate having to clean up after useless network admins in the real world, and hope they crash right out of the industry, but you can't assume that everyone asking a question is like that. I consider myself a very good and responsible network admin, I do things properly, and I do things fast - but I also have no idea on a Mac. If I asked a question like "I am a network consultant, how the hell do I get this Mac to work" should that instantly mean I am a fraud?
- Focus on what you are doing. If you are on a site for knowledge sharing, share it with everyone. I don't get people to contact me off the lists simply because I don't want the next person to contact me off the lists. It is stupid to do the same thing over and over again. If you are on a newsgroup and are happy to spend endless, free, hours working on someone else's system, knock yourself out.
That's it. Tough isn't it? I suppose it all falls down to respect - respect the rules, respect the admins, respect other members and respect the people asking the question.
The advice I give aspiring experts, or even more junior experts at EE is simple - find someone really good, and follow them around. When I started, I watched Sembee and learned how he was interacting with the site and it's members. I knew exchange, that wasn't the problem (although I did learn a lot more about it), but what I didn't know was how to work the site successfully.
Stick to your guns, don't change who you are for anything, but also know when to shut up and listen - I don't care who you are (myself included), there are thousands of people out there that know FAR more than you (or I) do.
Kieran