[Xerihae]

New players/mudders/forum visitors often get frustrated when they don't get an immediate answer to their question, especially if it's on a forum such as this where, let's be honest, a lot of people don't read that Newbie section. As they're new here, how are they supposed to know that though? You go on other forums and replies to topics are flying around every couple of minutes, whereas here it can take a few hours to get the answer you want. Is it their fault if their expectations of this forum are a little high because of their experience elsewhere? You could argue it is and it isn't. At the end of the day though, the Newbie Help section exists to help newbies. If you cannot be bothered to do this in a courteous and verbose manner then you shouldn't really be trying to help. One of my own personal bugbears is people who reply with things like "RTFM" or "Use search n00b". Yes, doing one of those things can often bring some answers, but it can also often bring a whole load of useless information that the person just doesn't want or have time to wade through. People post topics because they know there are people on a forum who will answer the same question a thousand times over without a gripe, the sort of people who make excellent greeters in supermarkets or newbie helpers on MUDs.

To address a few criticisms I seem to have received via reputation:

"I still don't see what the problem with Brody's OP was"

The problem was in the perceived tone of the reply. Brody has kindly clarified what he meant and admitted, as we all know, that text is terrible at conveying emotions and the nuances of speech which make the difference between a rude answer and an informative one. I myself read Brodys original post as somewhat curt and borderline insulting, so is it hardly surprising that the original poster did? Yes, we now know that he didn't mean it that way, but the benefits of hindsight etc etc.

"Horrid moderation." and "totally over the top and unnecessary. noob admin behavior."

As for those, well, where to start? The topic was a thread about how to connect to a MUD that due to what we now know was a misunderstanding ended up being mostly full of replies to do with the argument rather than the question. I removed these. I didn't know this particular forum software would leave behind stubs, otherwise it would have read a lot better. Too many topics on here and other forums wander off on a complete tangent or descend into petty arguments between regulars, and I saw no reason to allow that to happen here. Again, all I did was remove the posts that caused or continued the argument, and left the informative, neutral-or-friendly toned ones that answered the original question. You might not be used to this kind of moderation, which in many other places is considered the norm, but that is down to your expectations alone. It's not the first time I've removed posts that were just arguments in a thread on the Newbie Help section, but it's the first time I've come across a complaint.

I don't really care what reputation you give me to be fair, but I always feel it's nice to have an open discussion about problems as long as it's in the correct place. This thread, for instance, I feel is the correct place to discuss this. The topic I removed posts from was not the place to have that particular argument.