Memories... like the
corners of my mind...
Hey, maybe like many of us on GC, oldu just had a bad day/week and his PBK thread just kind of sent him over the edge? I know when I had my newbie-GC-freak-out I was overreacting out of some other real-life factors.
Oldu: give GC another chance and if someone is rude, just ignore it. That's one of the great things about GC... people will say things you disagree with and you will say things that others will disagree with. But once you find out you disagree, it doesn't mean either has to change the others mind. There are many posters on GC that I know will probably disagree with or vice versa, and sooner or later you start to see that the same people disagree over the same things pretty often. However, you'll also find a lot of people that you tend to agree with most of the time, too. As someone who came to a head with the same yearning for civility that you are, I urge you to give GC another chance. Everyone has their own view of what crosses the line of politeness or civility or whatever and if someone else crosses what you think the line is, just let it go.
One thing to keep in mind when it feels like the GC-smack-down is coming on you full force: next time you post, most people will give you another chance. That's one of the things I've liked here is that if you had a bad day one time and acted like an ass/biotch/idiot, once you are on here for a little bit and people get to see what you're about, people are pretty forgiving of small stuff and willing to give second chances.
Generally speaking, as someone who is interested in looking at statistics, I do appreciate having you as a fellow GC member and enjoy reading your threads, even when I might disagree over how useful a particular cross-referencing or number might mean. It is still interesting, for instance, to see how many campuses KAT and KKG share and hypothesize as to why that is (similar founding time-periods, similar geographical spread, etc.) I hope you don't leave, but if someone disagrees that one of your posts is useful the way it is, then I'd hope that you'd be able to say "whatever, I find it interesting, so there" and go on with your projects. If you're more interested in NPCs, go ahead and focus on those and don't let people make you feel like you OWE it to them to do research for others, as well. If they think that the statistics are useful, there is no reason they can't add on to your research... and no reason why you have to be the only person coming up with statistical cross-references. If someone doesn't think PBK is a good way to figure out which are the most academic schools (I'm one of them, but hey, I'm not offended by the thread or anything), invite them to figure out another way.
In short: if you'd like to see another newbie making a fool of herself, read the linked thread from above and laugh at my sincere attempts to caution the veterans from jumping down newbie-throats. I still think that when you see that someone has only been active a month and has less than 20 posts or something, it would do the community good to be a little kinder in giving criticism or making corrections unless or until that person has made it clear they are a silly troll or complete idiot, but there are worse things in the world of internet forums to get upset about and the alternatives (when people are afraid of posting anything that could be construed as disagreement) are much worse.
Welcome to the club of GCers who freaked out as newbies and started a thread that got out of control. Stick around and you'll see that there are more of us than you might think. It isn't a big deal, really, although I remember thinking at the time that it was such a freaking traumatic and embarrassing thing.
