Forum Clutter - Students (and others) posting in this forum 5

[human909]

Hi

Maybe it has become worse. Or maybe I'm just getting older. But there seems to be an increasing number of student or very inadequately trained engineers posting in this forum. Occasionally such posts can tangent to useful discussion but most of the time it is just clutter. Kootk posted quite strongly on this topic recently in one of the many threads posted by a student or severely inadequately trained engineer.

IMO the solutions is in our hands. Either;

• REPORT the thread and rely on admin to remove it and/or;
• have a strong direct reply and a strong request that nobody else replies so the thread dies a natural death or;
• do nothing as a fix isn't needed.

At present many of these threads are kept alive but questions and answers that got in circles or by people who add to the replies telling them to post elsewhere. (I perpetuated this today.) I believe content could be improved if we all made a better effort to ignore such threads. The "Truss" thread I initially ignored as I wanted to let it die, then after multiple replies from others I perpetuated it by replying.

Any thoughts? A useful discussion? Or will this thread die quickly....

Personally I think a combination of the first two solutions could readily shut down poor quality threads. The second only works if people listen and agree that the thread is better off dead. I believe it would work a reasonable percentage of the time.

 

[EngDM]

I read the policies just now. They look reasonable as is, provided they are enforced. I do not care much for rules without enforcement. To me, rules without enforcement just affect people who try to do right, not everyone else. The first one says students post in the student section.

I don't see the need to add an employment aspect. Who is going to check it and enforce it? Also, when you say, "a member posting", do you mean asking a question, answering a question or both? I can easily see a non-engineer answering one being worse than asking one.

Add a locked thread that you can provide additional information to the moderation team to access? So you can choose to do this, or not. I fear that this would keep many of the active posters here only replying within that locked forum and the main one would die/be way less active.

 

[Ron247]

Are you going to provide free engineering to all the DIY'ers who come asking for it? Do you think any of us should?

I have been quite clear in the past and now, I do not believe in supplying final designs to anyone. I have commented on several posts about that. So, the answer is no and no.

We should be able to flag that and remove it. But, because there are no rules against it, the powers that be won't pull it down.

What you are advocating for, I agree with 100%. I do not have the same opinion of how to achieve it. Why not add a rule that no one is allowed to ask for nor supply final designs. That includes the registered and highly competent. That requires no confirmation someone is, or is not an engineer of any kind. While it will not prevent OPs from asking for designs, it prevents the ill-advised responses. As far as "engineer adjacent", sounds good, now we just need to define what that means enough to apply and enforce it. Also, we should be able to complain about someone who responds to one. Basically, a "engineer only rule" does not prevent someone from lying unless ET is going to contact engineering boards for proof. Also, there is already a rule about people irritating other members in addition to the Ignore option. So again, something exists to some degree from what I read.

If the general opinion is that we're going to start doing engineering for free...I'm out.

I want to know where anything I have ever posted advocates for free engineering, including this thread. I am fairly sure I have made comments against the practice.

Who is going to check it and enforce it?

Your response: It's pretty obvious.
It is not obvious to me. So please explain.

 

[phamENG]

It is not obvious to me. So please explain.

You say you've commented on several threads - how did you know those were not engineers?

I say it's obvious because in a lot of a cases the OP openly states it. Or their questions are clearly not grounded in any sort of formal or technical training, and a little probing quickly brings out "well, no, I'm the contractor" or "my contractor said I should get an engineer to look at this" or something else. A few leading questions are usually all it takes to find out if the person posting even knows what a building code is, much less any sort of engineering first principles and ability to conduct an analysis and compare the results to design criteria.

Maybe it shouldn't be an employment thing...maybe just "no DIY projects or requests for free engineering performed by our community."

 

[Ron247]

Who is going to check it and enforce it?

It's pretty obvious. "I'm trying to remove the wall in the middle of my house. It looks like it's holding up 2 floors and my garage and the illegal unpermitted bridge I built to my

My apologies. Since my question you illustrated was "Who is going to check it and enforce it?" I assumed your answer directly answered that question. I was apparently wrong.

In the end, we both want a similar outcome, just see a different way to achieve it.

 

[phamENG]

In the end, we both want a similar outcome, just see a different way to achieve it.

Indeed. Today we are friends, if only because we share a common enemy.