It's oh so quiet...

[cyberdonblue]

There are over a thousand members signed up to this forum but not everyone feels comfortable airing an opinion or asking for help quite so publicly as on a forum. As has been quite rightly stated many times here, the N3V forum is a most unwelcoming place and if it is the only experience British Trainzers have of online contact, assistance or support then I'm not surprised that they're not in a hurry to look around and try and join any other Trainz forum. People need to be made to feel comfortable enough to contribute. I've never been involved with an online forum before and I clearly remember posting here in the "Member Introductions" for the first time. I was scared stiff - inspite of the fact that I'm closer to 65 than 21.

I have to say, though, that this forum is certainly a most friendly and welcoming place and an extremely helpful place when problems (of any sort) arise. Humility plays a big part here. I've noticed how humble people are when they offer advice or solutions to someone else's problem. They don't claim to be - or try to give the impression that they are - the world's foremost authority on whatever the difficulty aired is. They offer the solution and the recipient says (a usually heartfelt) thanks and everyone moves on without fuss. The N3V site, on the other hand - in my experience -, comes across very much like: "The gods have bestowed this cure upon you. Go forth and give thanks." Either that, or 3 or 4 different people dispute an opinion offered and end up in a slanging match with each other.

So, perhaps the answer is to try and encourage those "currently non-participating" members of OUR forum to step out of the shadows and give us their opinions on a few things, and ask the questions that are important to THEM without the fear of someone making them look ridiculous or sadly lacking in railway knowledge (something that I know and believe would never happen here anyway).

Dave

[PFX]

Wise words indeed!

I've seen plenty of cases where a 'noob' (a term I dislike at the best of times) asks a reasonable question and gets shot down by know it alls.

[Mightyena]

There are over a thousand members signed up to this forum but not everyone feels comfortable airing an opinion or asking for help quite so publicly as on a forum. As has been quite rightly stated many times here, the N3V forum is a most unwelcoming place and if it is the only experience British Trainzers have of online contact, assistance or support then I'm not surprised that they're not in a hurry to look around and try and join any other Trainz forum. People need to be made to feel comfortable enough to contribute. I've never been involved with an online forum before and I clearly remember posting here in the "Member Introductions" for the first time. I was scared stiff - inspite of the fact that I'm closer to 65 than 21.

I have to say, though, that this forum is certainly a most friendly and welcoming place and an extremely helpful place when problems (of any sort) arise. Humility plays a big part here. I've noticed how humble people are when they offer advice or solutions to someone else's problem. They don't claim to be - or try to give the impression that they are - the world's foremost authority on whatever the difficulty aired is. They offer the solution and the recipient says (a usually heartfelt) thanks and everyone moves on without fuss. The N3V site, on the other hand - in my experience -, comes across very much like: "The gods have bestowed this cure upon you. Go forth and give thanks." Either that, or 3 or 4 different people dispute an opinion offered and end up in a slanging match with each other.

So, perhaps the answer is to try and encourage those "currently non-participating" members of OUR forum to step out of the shadows and give us their opinions on a few things, and ask the questions that are important to THEM without the fear of someone making them look ridiculous or sadly lacking in railway knowledge (something that I know and believe would never happen here anyway).

Dave

Indeed! That is an excellent point, and I couldn't agree more. I like to think that I've come a long way knowledge wise since joining this forum (although I still don't profess to have the answer to everything, in fact I don't really have half a clue much of the time!), and that is due to the people on here, that actually treat you as an equal, who's run into something that's got them stumped, not just some cretin that has no idea what's going on and isn't worth the electricity used to type their response.

My opinion of the N3V forums was always that if you admitted to not knowing something, you were automatically weak/lesser/useless at everything, whereas here, the more advanced members would often take their time to explain the issue, and wouldn't judge you if you were having difficulty, and it's this attitude that helped me to learn a bit more about Trainz and to help others/give back wherever I can.

[ex-railwayman]

Excellent post cyberdonblue, of course, some folks, like me, are just naturally shy and don't post much.....

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

[cyberdonblue]

That's definitely a railway sense of humour

Dave

[DavidBrown]

Just got everything back up and running after a month without the internet for various reasons, and the good news is that I do seem to have missed/need to catch up on quite a bit around here, so even with fewer physical posts, there is still a huge amount of knowledge and skills being shared around here.