Let's keep it civil!

[pHaestus]

Guys I know that in the midst of a debate tempers can flare up. Forums don't allow nuances of speech that keep people aware that someone is being a smartass or making a joke, and sometimes things get taken WAY too seriously. Let's try and keep things a bit more friendly, and please don't take arguments across all the forums and threads.

I can't tell you to forget about disagreements and unpleasantness in the past or on other forums. I CAN tell you that the atmosphere and success of this forum will be negatively affected by making those disagreements your raison d'etre.

Here are some ideas of how we can more productively discuss things on this forum.

To all the practical people: If you ask advice from technical people then expect numbers and theory and some debate about the validity of numbers. This is the essence of science, after all. We are somewhat in la la land where theory can't reach and empirical observations reign. So the quality of the numbers (and the design of the experiemnt) are extremely important.

To the technical people: Don't take the "teacher up on high" attitude; it puts the discussion in a confrontational tone from the beginning. A link or two can work wonders to prove a point, and linking back to earlier discussions can help educate the newcomers and it also keeps you from repeating yourself all the time.

To everyone: NO PERSONAL ATTACKS! Keep that to PMs or e-mail (or to yourself)

I will try and follow these suggestions myself as well

[Joe]

To everyone.. just my take on all this banter lately…

I have noticed a lot lately that there seems to be no patients for any "noob" who doesn’t know cooling inside and out. This could also because people claim numbers or qualities of products they know nothing about. It’s the same in every industry. I see it in Automotive, IT, Media, and now cooling; there is always someone who claims something as fact when it’s really fiction. Most of the time its simply because the person doesn’t know enough of the technology to validate the comments he’s posting. That on its own is bad, but not as bad as people who see this and choose to tear the person apart and not offer any suggestion to really help the kid.

Now if comments come from someone established, and who SHOULD know what’s going on before posting facts and numbers. There is less tolerance with that because to become established and to want to be seen as that in the field, you need to research before you post. But even at that, helping people understand the technology is much better than rubbing their nose in it. People aren’t dogs, rubbing their nose in the problem and humiliating them wont fix it. What it will do is just build a wall between that person and someone who may really know what’s going on, but is just too arrogant to spell it out. Its also much more simple for people to act like assholes than to be helpful.

We are here to learn right? What I would like to see is more constructive debate, or criticism, and less arrogant banter between people who all think they are right and wont come down to a level of communication where people can actually learn.

Tolerance. It may take little patients or time to spell some stuff out... and may go against that whole ego thing... but in the end I think it will be much more productive.

Also... NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO AGREE!. There are multiple schools of thought. Some folks are concerned about different aspects than others. Some are engineers, some are purely performance driven and could care less about engineering. Not everyone has a Ph.D... Not everyone wants one

I dunno, I am getting off the soap box... now you kids play nice.

I also may be wrong.. it happens..