Susan is usually very calm. I live with two women and I'm willing to take a guess.

It's that time of the month.

Personality change.

(sorry...just my first thought when I read your message....hehe)

WOO HOO!!! A "5-page OT debate"!!!

I did it.

I haven't forgotton that whiskey Phrauge.

No wait... I am too late! :(

I think it's often a matter of perception. Internet forums are often seen (more or less candidly) as a quick (and more importantly, legitimate) alternative to reading/browsing through the manuals... I know that that's how I perceived them in the old Cakewalk newsgroups days...

Now, since I'm a geek I read the whole manual twice in less than two weeks when I first started out, and then all the articles I could find on Cakewalk's website before I even thought about browsing the newsgroups. But I also think that a lot of people assume that they'll be able to figure out this (intuitive) application pretty easily and don't want to browse through hundreds of pages when they run into a problem with something even they consider "basic" - hence the frustration and the arrogance in some cases.

So the only valid options to me are: help when I can, try and bring back the discussion to a more rationnal level, or then, simply ignore the threads.

That being said, I still feel that this particular discussion is as legitimate as the above-mentionned assumption. That's what those forums are about.

Edit: How boring and overly rationnal have I become... I guess all I was trying to say was RTFM!!! ;)

For what its worth... to be serious for a moment...

I agree with the basic original comment this thread was based on.

The biggest thing for me is the fact that there are folks out there who did not buy the software and and looking to us to be their manuals for them.

Also, Sonar is, of the major apps out there in this realm, the easiest to learn.

Can I make a few suggestions? (That may have already been made, thanks to the length of this thread)

First, that some not-so-expert, but not-so-newbie, forum users like me should step up and answer their share of annoying newbie questions and take the weight off the regular contributors like Susan. Reduce the "too few doing too much" factor.

But with this in mind, it'd be great if anyone could tag any string as "Solved" or "Answered" and save others the time spent in browsing strings that you find out have been replied.

Similarly, it would be good to be able to tag any string as "Difficult" or "Needs expert", so someone like me who may not be able to provide an answer, but can recognise it's a valid query of an interesting nature, can alert others to it.

All very open to abuse, unfortunately, but maybe someone can come up with a fine-tune alternative?

Now someone's going to tell emyou can already do it!

Cheers, Bag.

Does this thread have anything to do with "Can We Have A PRO Forum" ?

Max Arwood

But with this in mind, it'd be great if anyone could tag any string as "Solved" or "Answered" and save others the time spent in browsing strings that you find out have been replied.

Similarly, it would be good to be able to tag any string as "Difficult" or "Needs expert", so someone like me who may not be able to provide an answer, but can recognise it's a valid query of an interesting nature, can alert others to it.

Ah, but it can, and I often encourage people to change the subject of their first post to "SOLVED: yada yada" when it is solved.

Regards,
David

I just love the fact that Susan G wisely bailed out of this thread after PAGE 2 -- the point where things started getting ugly. I wonder where she went… She's probably out helping newbie users and answering their questions -- in SPITE of the sentiments she expressed in her original post.

Nope, she seems to have gotten stuck on this thread and then given up, it's too bad some of the old-timers have gotten discouraged lately.

No New Messages  	 	   RE: OT: My gripe with Newbies   	SONAR  	Susan G  	n/a  	n/a  	 6/13/2006 11:33:42 PM
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 No New Messages 		OT: My gripe with Newbies 	SONAR 	Susan G 	133 	2361 	6/15/2006 11:44:41 AM
 Infinite5ths [open new window] 

Hi Folks-

[dcastle: I'm not sure what your last post means, but anyway]

Sorry I didn't have time yesterday to read all the replies, let alone respond. I certainly didn't think it would go to 5 pages or whatever!

Just a few quick comments:
- I won't mention anyone specifically, but yes, the "type" of newbie I'm griping about is someone who comes in with a sense of entitlement, not someone who's read the documentation and doesn't understand it. Anyone who says [paraphrasing] "I don't have time to read the documentation or go through the Tutorials -- I just want to make music. So gimmee, gimmee" bugs me. It really does take so much longer that way. "Give a man a fish..." and all that does pertain.

- "Some" newbies don't appear to have legitimate copies of the software, and *some* of those seem to be the ones who are asking for help every step of the way. Well, duh! If you're using the demo, say so, and many of us will be more than willing to help if we can. If you're using a pirated version, go ahead and say that, too, and some here will be willing to help, but others might not. That's their right. Personally, I don't like it when people ask newbie questions here, complain about the software or how difficult it is to master and then it turns out they didn't pay for the software in the first place.

- I used to teach Help Authoring to Help Authors, and many of them had never pressed F1 in either Word or the Help Authoring tool itself. This might sound unbelievable, but it's absolutely true!

- The Index is pretty awful, agreed. It was a lazy/automatic job, but often the Documentation Team doesn't have much choice. Some think it's better to have a bad Index than none at all. The Search tab in the Help file is much more useful if you know how to use it.

- About the "time of the month" comment. Sorry, but I didn't think it was amusing (hehe -- not).

Thanks-

-Susan

I think the issue here is that many people seem to think that buying DAW software will make them producers/engineers, and that just fiddling with the user interface (or, at best, reading the manual) should teach them recording techniques. Sometimes they are musicians and can play an instrument to some extent, but these days of a computer in every kid's bedroom they often expect the DAW to become the instrument itself.

All this remids me of a funny story. One of my sisters is a Civil Engineer specialized in Structures (after my father, he is a respected bridge designer) and shortly after she got her degree she got a job selling the Structure Design software that most Spanish engineering and construction companies used at that time. One day, a guy who had bought one license called very angry complaining that the program was broken. He was designing a gas station canopy and when he ran a simulation it kept on tipping over no matter how he made it. It turned out that he wasn't an engineer, or an architect. He explained that he had been granted permits to open three gas stations in some rural area and that he had bought the software to design the canopies himself, so he could give them his personal touch.

Susan,

We've all pretty much jumped ship and are over at that other place now.
Come into the light.

Before you bug out, I need a serial number and a manual.........'cause I lost mine
when my dog ate it and fell into a black hole.....
so quit debating and give it up, fer chrissakes....

ORIGINAL: s_barber
Instead of handing the answer over refer them to the manual or other documentation. Point them to the index or show them how to search for their own help.

Well I agree with you. The trouble is that if you do take this approach on this forum, there's never any shortage of people willing to flame you for it:

Example:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.asp?m=726081&key=manual

Best,
Geoff

IMO, if you find something puerile, lacking in effort, or otherwise unsatisfying, then move on. A non-response can be incentive to seek other means to a resolution. That happened with me a few times. I found other ways to learn what I needed to know (sometimes I even read the manual ;) I can now proudly to proclaim to be an "informed" newbie...and probably always will be. There's will always be something "new" to learn.

From the manual - doing a search for "clean audio folders"...this is the second link in the search, called "deleting unused audio files"...

Well I still share, as I do from time to time sometimes. Be very carefull with that command. It has been known to eat things into cyberspace, you did not wish it to. Don't punch that button till you are sure of which files are going bye-bye....................