RFEM - the effective length is not defined 2

[Pretty Girl]

Why these errors occur? This is a very basic structure to test the software. I did their steel hall tutorial as well before which it ran smoothly without any errors and at that the RFEM didn't ask to set effective lengths manually.

I just drew four legs, on top of the drew another four legs, connected those with beams and bracings and put hinged support. When I click the analyze button, it throws these errors.

Why don't it just automatically calculate the effective lengths etc. Or is it saying some other thing that I should have done?

Tension braces are also just steel beams (I just wanted to test it without wasting much time)

 

[KootK]

@milkshakelake: my volley.

But I give people the benefit of the doubt and treat them like a random human. Colorblind, genderblind, and all that. It removes a lot of assumptions and accusations. Tangentially, I also give people benefit of doubt when they don't know something seemingly trivial, because I have no idea what their life is like.

So what I'm hearing is that your are in favor of enforcing no standards / social norms here whatsoever. No minimum standards of behavior. No minimum standard of competency. No minimum expectation of reasonable growth in competency. You know, because you never know what someone else is going through, right?

I disagree. I feel that any garden worth having will ultimately wind up requiring some proactive weeding occasionally. Consider:

A) ENGISSOL. Remember that guy? The software peddler that was using our forum as a shameless advertising platform in exchange for trivial contributions? Should we have let him stay because.... what? Maybe he was having bad day/quarter? Not only would we have had to continue to put up with his abuse and exploitation of us, it would have created a horrendous precedent for the many other representatives of software companies that participate here. It would have been the path to an uglier garden.

B) R13 / ret13. You know, that dude that would contribute fifty responses to any thread, regardless of whether it was within his wheelhouse or not? Should we ask him to comeback because... what? Because was clearly a well intentioned retiree who enjoyed hanging out with us (he was)? I actually feel awful about R13's excommunication to this day. I wish that could have been resolved by way of training rather than banishment. I was one of many folks who contributed to this decision but, for me, it came down to this: I strongly suspect that the reason that JAE was absent from our lives for a spell was because of his frustrations with R13 and management not taking any action to correct the situation. And, for me, nothing uglies up this beautiful garden faster than my most significant digi-mentor being driven out of it.

Like I said, this is a probability thing for me.

If the only problem that I saw here was a handle that looked like catfishing, anti-feminism, and gonzo poor judgment, I would probably leave it alone. If phamENG decided to change his handle to PrettierGURL, for example, I would abstain from criticizing that decision because, obviously, one would have to be insane to doubt pham's intentions given the scale of his contributions here.

But the handle is not the only problem that I see here. In addition:

1) In three years, Pretty Girl has not made a single contribution to any thread other than his own. Not one: Link. Yes ,yes, perhaps Pretty Girls is just so incompetent and shy that he lacked the confidence to try and assist anyone else. Regardless, to date Pretty Girl's relation ship with this community is one sided and parasitic in nature. All take, no give.

2) I feel that Pretty Girl has established a pretty clear pattern of exploiting the good will of the folks on this forum as a substitute for investing the time required to rectify his technical deficiencies. Rather than helping Pretty Girl to improve, I get the sense that we are serving as a crutch to allow him to continue to not improve. At this point, we are enabling his incompetence.

Again, I would not normally bother myself with raising a fuss over #1 and #2 in isolation. There are plenty of members here that do the very same thing.

My willingness to call Pretty Girl out on this stems from the combination of his parasitic relationship with this forum with a handle that strongly suggests catfishing.

@milkshakelake: given the combination of a catfish-suggestive handle and #1 and #2, what would you say the likelihood is that I have indeed misread the situation here and Pretty Girl is really a transwoman employing an escape hatch?

Seriously, give me a percentage. As an engineer, you know full well that no meaningful decision is made in an environment of perfect certainty.

And at what percentage would you condone action here? Or is there no such percentage?

 

[milkshakelake]

what would you say the likelihood is that I have indeed misread the situation here and Pretty Girl is really a transwoman employing an escape hatch?

(Minor note - I didn't mean that they're deliberately employing an escape hatch. I meant that many transwomen have usernames like that, and that gives them an escape hatch from nefarious use to me because the practice is common.)

I'd say that your chance of misreading the situation is around 20%. I don't mean specifically that Pretty Girl is a transwoman; I mean that there might be more to their story than we can definitively answer here. I think the transwoman possibility is around 0.1%. I pointed out the transwoman thing because it's a possibility you may have overlooked, and there might be others. I base this on my own personal experiences. There have been times I was sure I was right, like in my relationships, when I considered all the evidence. I would run things in my mind over and over, and I was 100% correct based on my own reasoning. But occasionally, it turned out that I was missing a vital piece of the puzzle, and the other person was right.

The best way I can explain this is through a hobby of mine. I watch speedrunning. This is where valiant nerds try to beat video games as quickly as possible. There are occasionally cheaters. If they're found cheating, they get exiled from the community. But this only happens after a thorough investigation, and after definitive evidence of cheating was found. Sometimes, it's something as subtle as a score being 10 points higher than it should, or a treasure box spawning a combination of items in an order that is impossible because of the algorithm (this was a real thing in Minecraft). Anyway, the point is that the accusation of cheating isn't enough for an excommunication.

As an engineer, you know full well that no meaningful decision is made in an environment of perfect certainty.

Hard, indisputable evidence in lieu of probability should be provided for an accusation like catfishing.


Regarding A) and B) [members who have been banned]: A) has met the proof standard for the dismissal. The evidence of wrongdoing and antisocial behavior is in the posts themselves. B) is more of an opinion-based decision reached by committee, which is fine too. That's probably more in the realm of the Pretty Girl situation.

Regarding 1) and 2) [parasitic behavior of Pretty Girl]: Like you said yourself, Pretty Girl is not an isolated case. If you want to banish these types of people, that's a different discussion. I don't want to get into that, because that's a whole other issue and the train would start going off the rails. Your problem is the combination of 1), 2), and catfishing. So if the catfishing thing isn't definitive, then Pretty Girl becomes like many others. I feel like the strength of your conviction of username misuse is amplified by 1) and 2), and wouldn't have surfaced otherwise.

I think someone who can clear up the air is @Pretty Girl . I doubt they'll respond, but let's see. I'll get some popcorn ready just in case.

So what I'm hearing is that your are in favor of enforcing no standards / social norms here whatsoever.

No. I meant specifically for this case, I don't have enough evidence to say it's antisocial behavior. But I also probably have higher than average empathy, so my bar might be lower than yours. I do have a bar.

No minimum expectation of reasonable growth in competency.

I think this part of the discussion would derail this locomotive, at least for how I see the itinerary. But if you want to discuss that, we could.