Dont be so harsh on newbies....

[Snowman]

just a question jamie,how would you propose newbies to get a link with an experienced keeper?? yeh there might be a lot of experienced ppl out there,but most if not all,wont let you near their place let alone give you info and help..... the reptile world is a place of hush hush and secrecy,thats what ive observed anyway....my reptile gathering was started on a whim,bought in a carpark sale,cause "god forbid" i might see what they had,let alone get information out of them.

If you buy from the right breeders then you have a mentor for sure. I always give my number to people and email address who buy my pythons. I answer questions and help in anyway I can. I dont let people come to my house either.... I've formed friendships with some of these people just via emails. They love to show me how their little pet is growing and new enclosures etc... I guess some breeders are jerks but most of the ones I know are great and happy to help. I got my first python from one of Pythoninfinite's mates in WA. He has been a great mentor and taught me the basics as well as things like sexing pythons etc. I have also never been to his house. But he has come to mine when he sold me the python and to show me how to do somethings like sexing the pythons with probes...
The other thing I did is join the local herp society. I met a ton of people who know their stuff from there too. I moved to WA when I was 30 and havent really gone out of my way to make new mates here. Just family that I hang with mainly... But my reptile friends and aquaintances here are top people
Other than that... Read, read and read some more... There is heaps of info out there if you are willing to do some searching.

 

[NotoriouS]

Yes, people should be nicer... BUT... if you're going to be offended or hurt by what someone says on an internet forum, then you've got issues.

 

[harlemrain]

If someone bought a car and started driving it before they knew how, I'm sure you'd all be very blunt...

This is true to a point but everyone who drives a car for the first time doesn't really know how. I'm sure they know the basics but I bet they ask alot of dumb questions like who gives way here or how do you put it in neutral. And it helps when learning to drive if the person teaching you doesn't make you feel stupid.

Noone knows everything starting out so yeah I think that you should always research before buying a reptile but what's wrong with using APS and it's many members as a source of information? While I think this should be done BEFORE buying your reptile but there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of other people's experience and using it to help better your knowledge. Why bother joining this site if you can't ask questions/don't want to answer other people's because you deem it "stupid" or "obvious".

Alot of the times it's not what you say but how you say it....

Rant over

 

[Snowman]

I'm blunt.. it's part of my personality and I also have aspergers which explains a lot.... I dont intend for people to get offended but they do sometimes.
I've found some newbies give advice, that is bad advice. In a perfect world people wouldnt give advise unless they have a few years experience. We see a lot of 10min experts.
The other thing that is very annoying is people asking for advice then not wanting to hear the correct answer. They seem to get offended that they are doing something wrong. Despite them asking the question are they doing things the correct way.....
I keep an open mind. There are so many ways to keep snakes and I'm always learning something new...
It's frustrating to see things like Jamie mentioned about refreezing rodents. It's just an example, but a good example of how people with little to no knowledge lead people astray by insisting something like refreezing is a bad practice. When as Jamie pointed out the rodents decompose in the snakes stomach anyway. They are not humans or mammals!!!
It would be good if some of the experienced people like Pythoninfinite, Longi etc had a star or something next to their names. Newbies come onto this site and dont know who the experienced people are....

 

[andynic07]

These days there is a massive amount of info available on the interwebs.More and more it seems that a lot of new keepers want to be spoon fed even the most basic stuff.

You are very right but as a relatively new person to the hobby I have found stuff on the internet that I have mentioned on here and then have been shot down as being wrong. I even posted a care sheet by do little farms about spotted pythons that helped me get started and that was shot down as being full of dribble by another member on here.

I usually do my best to do as much research as I can then cross check it with certain members on here that I have learned to be able to trust. I also have a breeder that is more than willing to answer my questions and give me any help that I need "Creatures of Habit".

 

[jack]

just a question jamie,how would you propose newbies to get a link with an experienced keeper??

go along to reptile club meeting...

 

[Ramsayi]

I usually do my best to do as much research as I can then cross check it with certain members on here that I have learned to be able to trust.

Nothing wrong with that at all.The ones I am referring to do seemingly zero research in the first place and usually after purchasing a reptile come onto a forum and ask basic questions.If they used a search function they would see the question has been asked and answered many many times over.

 

[Jessie_James]

Create a new forum for people who are new to the game so they can use each other as a sound board without getting snarled at by the more experienced members. Also people need to remember that text can be interpreted many different ways from person to person, but a few replies are just straight out freakin rude! It's that hiding behind computer syndrome lol. All I'm saying is take 5 to consider the 12 year old mind on the otherside of the screen. 9 times outa ten there parents don't want anything to do with the reptile and if I remember rightly I was like a bull at a gate at that age but with the best intentions.

 

[RedFox]

I am very new to keeping and have only owned a snake for less than a year. While I personally haven't being attacked I have seen a few member being shot down both while I have being a member and while I was just a lurker.

While I have a very small amount of practical experience, I did my homework before buying and luckily have a close friend who I used to help with her pythons and has given me a lot of useful advice. So it can be very annoying that people ask basic questions like feeding, defecating, sloughing, biting, etc.

Recently I vented on here about a certain 12 year old who is a perfect example of trying to be an expert with no research to back him up, as well as asking questions that could easily be answered by the breeder or a two second google search.

Another one of my pet hates are the people who don't know or read the main conditions that go with their license, eg, owning a reptile for minimum 6months. These tend to be the newbies that get a major flaming.

 

[Sezzzzzzzzz]

Create a new forum for people who are new to the game so they can use each other as a sound board without getting snarled at by the more experienced members. .

so newbies can ask other newbies for advice and recieve incorrect advice that they then pass down to the next lot of newbies?

 

[Jessie_James]

No so newbies can look for associated links on this site and point each other to it. Use a few moderators to control it people that don't mind a question of less significance to the rest of the site. Sarcasm noted! Lol

 

[montysrainbow]

so newbies can ask other newbies for advice and recieve incorrect advice that they then pass down to the next lot of newbies?

lol Sezzzzzzzzz good point. cant we all just play together? as ive mentioned and u all know im a newbie and only have the one but it didnt take me long to clue onto all the pros....ive kinda worked out some members know alot more about this hobby than others and thats great! lol because ive learnt alot from them since joining , and thats why i joined in the 1st place.

Hopefully in yrs 2 come when i start breeding snakes instead of kids lol and have loads of experience i can be of the same help to future noobs

 

[Jessie_James]

I'd like to see this continue, very interesting.

 

[andynic07]

I sometimes don't mind a good "flaming". It sometimes is fun to get into a heated intellectual debate , you sometimes end up being right and and sometimes end up being wrong but always learn new things.

 

[montysrainbow]

I sometimes don't mind a good "flaming". It sometimes is fun to get into a heated intellectual debate , you sometimes end up being right and and sometimes end up being wrong but always learn new things.

i used to (when i 1st joined) love hopping on here on a friday night with my bottle of sav blanc lol it was hillarious at times not newbie related so much but it was funny.

 

[Zipidee]

As a newbie (and I still am) one of the handy links on this site was the Wiki-FAQ section. A lot of basic newbie questions can be answered by reading these. I'd strongly suggest any newbie read these FAQs first, before asking a question, because maybe you'll have it answered for you. Just a thought.

 

[TheChondroCharm]

had a quick skim through all the replies and understand where a lot of the newbies are coming from.

i personally think its more the repetition of newbie posts that frustrates people. pretty well all newbie questions can be found via the search function and it frustrates me to tears when people dont use it. seeing new threads such as "is this the right temp for my Darwin" or "my new snake wont eat" are two that ive noticed seem to be on a repeat loop and to be honest a blunt answer is what they should get if they wont search. the info hasn't outdated because a thread is a year old.

i also think that previous newbies have ruined chances of friendly in depth replies for new ones. just as if a business made a mistake and people yell at the person on the phone or the attendant, that person didnt personally wrong you but you still yell at them, simply because thats the face of the company at the time. same with newbies, they come and ask the same questions and its not so much a personal attack for lack of knowlege but newbies as a whole and that person is the face there at the time.

Google is also destroying research value i reckon. you can find millions of answers for newbie questions though a lot of the time its contradicting, and the info may be wrong all together. reptiles i believe is a book hobby. buy books and read them, you cant go past a good piece of herp literature. its black and white and doesnt have 100 links to go off tangent.

for nice replies id also suggest not arguing when given an answer. just take it on board. its quite frustrating when you give advice and they either throw it back in your face saying google said otherwise or saying that doesnt sound right to them. if you ask for advice, take it on board.

 

[andynic07]

had a quick skim through all the replies and understand where a lot of the newbies are coming from.

i personally think its more the repetition of newbie posts that frustrates people. pretty well all newbie questions can be found via the search function and it frustrates me to tears when people dont use it. seeing new threads such as "is this the right temp for my Darwin" or "my new snake wont eat" are two that ive noticed seem to be on a repeat loop and to be honest a blunt answer is what they should get if they wont search. the info hasn't outdated because a thread is a year old.

i also think that previous newbies have ruined chances of friendly in depth replies for new ones. just as if a business made a mistake and people yell at the person on the phone or the attendant, that person didnt personally wrong you but you still yell at them, simply because thats the face of the company at the time. same with newbies, they come and ask the same questions and its not so much a personal attack for lack of knowlege but newbies as a whole and that person is the face there at the time.

Google is also destroying research value i reckon. you can find millions of answers for newbie questions though a lot of the time its contradicting, and the info may be wrong all together. reptiles i believe is a book hobby. buy books and read them, you cant go past a good piece of herp literature. its black and white and doesnt have 100 links to go off tangent.

for nice replies id also suggest not arguing when given an answer. just take it on board. its quite frustrating when you give advice and they either throw it back in your face saying google said otherwise or saying that doesnt sound right to them. if you ask for advice, take it on board.

You make some very good points there but as I have stated before I would imagine nearly all subjects have been talked about on here. What would be the limit to number of times a subject can be talked about and who would police this? I am not disagreeing with you but more asking how is this to work? I do on the other hand totally agree with you about people asking for advice and then having it thrown back in your face or disregarded. It is good to have different ideas thrown around especially if there is a logical reason and discussions to follow but I know what you mean when someone has a snake for a few weeks and argues the basic right advice they are given.

 

[Ash1990]

Topics that pop up all the time that annoy the heck out of me, so I imagine they would annoy the people who are on this site all the time:

-OMG, my baby snake just BIT me!!!!! argh, its never done that before, whats wrong with it?????!!!! Is it possessed!!!!???

- OMG, my snake hasn't eaten in 7 days!!!!!!!!! it usually eats every 5th day on the dot!!! WILL IT DIE!!!!???

- I just got a snake!!!! YAY, now tell me everything about it because I dont know!!!!!! Temps, cage size, diet etc!!!

A tiny bit of research might help stop all these qs, because I swear everytime I get on, there is another one. These were the first thing I looked up when I got interested in snakes. Even worse is when people ask a qs and you can google it and find 4 good sourced pages within 2 secs that have the info and then cross reference to check all agree and hey presto, you would expect that info to be correct and accurate. And it took 2 minutes and you didn't annoy the heck out of someone.

 

[TheChondroCharm]

What would be the limit to number of times a subject can be talked about and who would police this? I am not disagreeing with you but more asking how is this to work?

honestly it probably never will. it would take 100% concentration from mods and warnings being given to new users about posting already covered topics. which is stupid and unrealistic and would probably scare most newbies away before they get the chance to say hello.

people just need to learn to be tolerant of new comers and if you don't want to make a suggestion or give advice for the 50th time then don't. don't be snide, don't be a smart **** and don't be belligerent towards them. a blunt answer is fine because essentially that's what they want, an answer, but making it friendly is a nice touch.

as for newbies taking offense or feeling bullied or what ever about replies, that's personal i suppose and you cant police peoples emotions. to some its water off a ducks back and others genuinely feel targeted or demeaned. no one can help that because everyone has a different personality. the reason IMO that they feel replies are mean only when first starting is that they come on here with the knowledge they have thinking they've done great and have a real sense of pride in themselves for all the new stuff they've learned and then get corrected or told they've done wrong research or get grilled from someone who's "mean" and it hits them hard. not to mention some being younger and not being able to judge the tone replies are intended to be taken.

nothing will change, there's too many variables (sarcasm, personalities, age, knowledge) for this issue to be rectified as such. good to bring it up though