[StanD]

That would be a start.

Another thing is don't let yourselves get lured into the weeds. During the last big Schiitstorm, he had you all off arguing about building pyramids and Tesla and Schiit.

se

Yep, lets not play the game.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

How about a simple process. We should all ignore repeated unsubstantiated silly posts.

That would be a start.

Another thing is don't let yourselves get lured into the weeds. During the last big Schiitstorm, he had you all off arguing about building pyramids and Tesla and Schiit.

se

If you could prove him wrong on everything from pyramids to tesla coils, that's fine by me

 

[castleofargh]

  Nice idea for a thread Joe.
 
Just some musings - from someone who genuinely tires to be objective in my observances, but often does not understand the science behind it all.
 

• We need a series of resource threads that can be written in easy to follow laymans terms, that someone new - without a lot of experience - can understand, and test for themselves.  An example - although it's probably full of flaws (and needs to be rewritten) is this on ABX etc
   
• I'd also suggest a resource link to some of the really good videos that are around - like Ethan's workshops
   
• I've really enjoyed some of the posts from Steve when it comes to cables.  But often the math is a little out my grasp (even though I'm a pretty smart guy).  A thread explaining the basics on cables - and why materials etc can't change audible frequency response (or when they could) would be good.  but again - in easy to understand laymans terms - with examples.  Spell out how the math works.  Treat it as a primer.
   
• I really enjoyed Ethan's Audio Myths video.  I'd love to see a thread dedicted to examples (video is great) of psycho acoustic instances where the brain is fooled.  Poppy's part in that video was brilliant. The more people get the chance to learn in an entertaining fashion, and the more that we question our own human abilities - the more open we might be to the fact that human limitations should be celebrated rather than always trying to attain golden eared status.
   
• Once the main threads are in place - then when you get someone claiming the bogus threads - just drop them the link to the appropriate thread, and suggest they have a read.  If they refuse and go on a rant etc - just ignore it, and them.  You can lead a horse to water ......
  
  The ffbookman stuff is an ideal example of not how to go about things.  You'll never change his mind, and he'll never test himself - so you're at an impasse.  The smartest thing to do is issue an invitation to set-up an independently monitored test, and then when he refuses, just simply block him - and don't answer any of his posts - no matter what he posts.  At that time it's a good idea to also start reporting him if he's deliberately going out of his way to provoke.
   
• The worst thing I see from "the SS mob" is when questions are asked - and even if you think they are not genuine - the immediate reaction is to deride, denigrate, mock and ridicule.  Stan - for all I have learnt from you - yours are often the worst.  I know its done in banter - but anyone coming here to learn, and reading how the objectivists treat visitors, would immediately leave, never to return again.  If you want an example of how to post - follow nick-charles. Always calm, always rational, always written based on known facts, and with provided references.

 
I know its hard to remain calm - especially when you see some of the responses from people who are likely trolling for a response.  But often its better to explain your position, and then not insist on having the last word.  If it gets too much - block the offender and flag them.
 
I've learnt so much in the last 4 years - from all of you - and I am grateful for that.  But if learning comes at the cost of denigrating our fellow community members - are we really happy with that?

can't say you're wrong on any point. but again aren't all those the symptoms and not the sickness?
take 5. and 6. together. how can we stop FFbookman from posting "320≠40k" 300more times to say that mp3 sucks, when I alone have already explained to him twice that it is a total nonsense argument. bitrate and sample rate aren't the same thing, and mp3 isn't PCM. different units, and different format, that should be compelling enough to stop pretending they're the same stuff right? but as you say he doesn't read and doesn't care. and he posted it once more a few days ago on the wave vs flac topic when he now fully knows and has been told by several people that it was wrong to do it.
it has become his main argument, comparing apple and oranges in a strawman argument and just wait for a guy like bigshot or stan or myself to blow a fuze. all the troll has to do is have patience. as in our actual headfi rules, we have zero practical way to stop a troll.
what is right and fair in this system? nothing. what you suggest is for us all to always be cool, always be wise, and always treat him with respect... by ignoring his posts or him entirely.
so the answer against one guy misbehaving is that the entire forum has to move around him without touching him. where is that normal and fair?
 
how can we expect a public forum to be able to behave like that? parent can't do it with their own kids on a daily basis, of course stuff will blow out of proportion, and of course someone(probably me) will bite at the troll. if not the first time, if not the second, one day for sure we all know I will. it's only a question of time and the troll doesn't mind for that as he can go all day long and it will never cost him anything. because there is no rule against posting nonsense again and again and again.
 
in sound science, science should be the ruler. and claims should never ever come without backup.
a false claim or a fallacy is used. the normal action is what we already do, we call it what it is.
at that point 3 possible ends:
 
1/ the guy understands why what he said is wrong and he isn't blinded by his own ego. he will just admit he was wrong, or at least stop posting his erroneous stuff.
2/ the guy's ego would let him burn the world before he ever admits to not being a knowing being, and he will just continue to talk nonsense until the day he dies. nothing in the actual headfi can prevent him from doing so in sound science, and at some point someone will get made at him and will not be wrong. but he will get a ban or a locked topic or deleted post. and that's just wrong.
3/ we get some matter of law saying that unsubstantiated claims and fallacies should be posted outside of sound science: the guy is reminded of the TOS and stops on his own from fear of the police. or he doesn't, and instead of all going crazy over his BS, we can just ask a modo to take matters in his own end and stop the troll. end of the problem. nobody got killed, no kitten was hurt, and we can at long last talk about what interests us instead of running in circle with a troll posting the same claims again and again.
 
I don't know about you, but I find 3/ to be one hell of a progress. that's what I ask in my previous post. the problem needs to be treated, not the symptoms. and the problem is that nothing can be done against a guy who decides to post a nonsense claim 10 times a day. in sound science we need to have the moderators and the law on the side of science and facts. that's what I'm asking for.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
about simple easy to understand resources, it's the thing about science and facts, they are most of the time complex stuff, and simplifying them is only making them false. we have examples of that all over the forum on both sides of objectivism and subjectivism sadly. that's when people use values or definitive statements as weapons with no regard to the magnitude of those values or how they compare to the rest of the audio chain.
 as soon as we try to make things simple, we distort reality. you think we can explain cables in a simple way? how? if the guy has no background in electricity how do we convince him? by making a statement and just expect him to trust us?
yes sometimes a cable will make an IEM to sound very different. and yes other times no matter the cable, the sound will always be audibly the same. both can be real depending on external factors. we try to make it simple with rule of thumbs and saying to people that cable won't matter if they respect the at least 1/10 damping ratio, so that variations in FR should stay below 1db and thus not really matter.
but then they take the impedance of an IEM as stated in specs, so at 1khz only. and when cables do make a difference because the 30ohm IEM in fact goes as low as 8ohm, they come back to us telling we lied. so now we need to explain that impedance changes over frequency. even though it is perfectly understood, how do we make that simple? we now need to have people learn how to read and impedance graph. I really wish I knew how to make stuff simple and still true.
and that's not even starting with how the amp behavior might change with different loads... how can that relate to people asking "what's the best sounding device?"
 
TBH I've started to make some stuff several times to "make it simple", but I can never go through because there would always be something need more explaining that nobody will want to learn. I tried making that just to give the basics of PCM on a french forum, it was really made to be for the lay person and nothing advanced. I ended up making a 13pages .doc

who would want to read 13pages with a conclusion saying that it's just the very surface of digital conversion? ^_^
 
I always wanted to make a graph showing loudness, dynamic of formats, and distortions on the same axis with several formats and devices to put the values into perspective so that people would stop crying over stuff at -120db as if it was audible on a system that fails to resolve -80db. but I just don't know how without being wrong.
if I put a range value for headphone distortions, what should it be? I have no clue. I certainly have an idea about where that should be, but what values can I put on both sides without being a liar?
same with an amp, do I use the specs they give with no load, or should I try to find some average "in real usage" with the volume turned down and the noise floor now much more closer to the music? how to do that when there are so many amps and so many headphones combo possible? I again have a fair idea about a range of values, but no way to make a graph about it as I don't know where to start and where to end. if I do I would at some point be wrong. is that acceptable? to shortcut the truth as a mean to educate people? I don't know if I have the right to pretend objectivity without actually using it. but such a graph even false would certainly shut a great deal of arguments about highres, jitter, EQ distortions, low pass filters, or how colored tube amps are hifi... showing how all of those are a joke compared to an average audio chain resolution.
is a compromise of truth still truth just because it's closer to reality than other claims?
 
 
as you can see I'm very passionate and boring(sorry people) about those stuff. I always felt lucky to be able to find great souls willing to help and educate me on the web. a total stranger wasting his time for me for free! probably the best human thing still happening on that planet. as I obviously can't ever hope to repay those guys because they know so much more than I do, I take it that I should in turn do the same when by luck I happen to know a little about what someone wishes to learn. it's my little own wheel of karma ^_^, and then those guys might explain stuff to other guys and we all share our knowledge and the world ends up a better place where ignorance doesn't have to win.

 

[Steve Eddy]

I still don't see what was so wrong about that.

Other than it being completely off topic and off point?

It only got messy once people decided to start getting nasty.

That didn't help.

se

 

[Joe Bloggs]

On the other hand, if they went off on a tangent that you cannot refute with fact or well backed arguments (could even be an audio topic) but you've only got this gut feeling that he's wrong, well, you either research and put together a real argument or shut up about that part. You don't start calling him a troll because he's "not playing fair" with his arguments by zipping every which way and throwing up ill-formed arguments that are so much easier to throw up than to tear down. That's just the way those not of a scientific bent roll, there's nothing you can do about it.

My thought on this were summed up in this post of the day:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/486598/testing-audiophile-claims-and-myths/6495#post_11644737

Ironically, it seems the temptation is greater for one of a scientific mindset to resort to name-calling--because it's so much easier and quicker for someone to pull another ill-formed argument, anecdote, etc. out of his hat than for the scientific representative to rebut it with properly backed arguments. To this I say, rebut the arguments you have time to rebut when you have time, leave the rest of the torrent of "arguments" alone, and leave it to the audience to see for themselves who has the better points. Those readers who cannot tell the wheat from the chaff are not those you can hope to win over to your side anyway.

Do not in any case attempt to match the other guy's post rate--you'll run out of arguments in no time, whereas their "arguments" are inexhaustible.

If you guys all "liked" it (9 likes so far, got me top rated post of the day Thanks guys!), does that mean you'll agree with what I say in what you do?

 

[Steve Eddy]

If you could prove him wrong on everything from pyramids to tesla coils, that's fine by me

Why would I necessarily want to prove him wrong? It's the claimant's job to prove themselves right, not necessarily our job to prove them wrong. Pyramids and Tesla was just a distraction out in the weeds.

When he asked me what I thought about Tesla, I simply said I wasn't aware that Tesla had done any work with audio cables and could he be more specific. He didn't have an answer for that and it stopped right there. If instead I had gone on with five paragraphs about Tesla, we would have been arguing about Tesla, who was irrelevant to the discussion.

se

 

[limpidglitch]

Other than it being completely off topic and off point?

se

 
As with analog, I believe there was an internal logic to his reasoning. He wanted to know about electricity, wether there was something to N. Teslas old musings, and wether the old egyptians knew how to use electricity.
Those are completely legitimate questions in my book, and we should be able to answer them in a calm and rational manner. 

 

[Steve Eddy]

As with analog, I believe there was an internal logic to his reasoning. He wanted to know about electricity, wether there was something to N. Teslas old musings, and wether the old egyptians knew how to use electricity.
Those are completely legitimate questions in my book, and we should be able to answer them in a calm and rational manner. 

If he wanted to learn about electricity, then you should have stuck to explaining electricity. Pyramids and Tesla have nothing to do with explaining electricity, nor do they have anything to do with Sound Science.

se

 

[limpidglitch]

If he wanted to learn about electricity, then you should have stuck to explaining electricity. Pyramids and Tesla have nothing to do with explaining electricity, nor do they have anything to do with Sound Science.

se

 
In his mind it evidently did.
He's not the first, and won't be the last, to arrive here with some funny preconceptions.

 

[Roly1650]

If he wanted to learn about electricity, then you should have stuck to explaining electricity. Pyramids and Tesla have nothing to do with explaining electricity, nor do they have anything to do with Sound Science.

se

I agree, based on his posting record, the only interest he had was in rubbishing science, he was about 3 posts away from his omnipotent diety speech. Imo he played everybody on the thread and was as interested in learning about electricity as I am in learning how to sky dive without a chute and ultimately the real nasty piece of work on the thread was him. Thankfully, the mods agreed, deleted his final crude, insulting post and moved the thread out of SS, since when he's been invisible, so insatiable is his thirst for knowledge.

 

[Steve Eddy]

In his mind it evidently did.

But trying to disabuse him of that was just a distraction.

He's not the first, and won't be the last, to arrive here with some funny preconceptions.

Sure. But unless they somehow relate to Sound Science, they should just be ignored.

se

 

[Steve Eddy]

I agree, based on his posting record, the only interest he had was in rubbishing science, he was about 3 posts away from his omnipotent diety speech. Imo he played everybody on the thread and was as interested in learning about electricity as I am in learning how to sky dive without a chute and ultimately the real nasty piece of work on the thread was him. Thankfully, the mods agreed, deleted his final crude, insulting post and moved the thread out of SS, since when he's been invisible, so insatiable is his thirst for knowledge.

Yeah. He was just a Tesla/free energy crank. As my friend says, the Law of Conservation, she's a bitch.

se

 

[cel4145]

On the other hand, if they went off on a tangent that you cannot refute with fact or well backed arguments (could even be an audio topic) but you've only got this gut feeling that he's wrong, well, you either research and put together a real argument or shut up about that part. You don't start calling him a troll because he's "not playing fair" with his arguments by zipping every which way and throwing up ill-formed arguments that are so much easier to throw up than to tear down. That's just the way those not of a scientific bent roll, there's nothing you can do about it.

My thought on this were summed up in this post of the day:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/486598/testing-audiophile-claims-and-myths/6495#post_11644737
If you guys all "liked" it (9 likes so far, got me top rated post of the day Thanks guys!), does that mean you'll agree with what I say in what you do?

Agreed. The sound science forum likes to spend a bit too much time talking about other posters instead of talking about the science.

It's one thing for people to get a little heated in talking about science. It's quite another when people start ganging up and calling someone a troll. Or when these "lounge" threads become discussions focused on saying negative things about another poster. Those types of activities deserve to have threads shut down. This is not a school yard, and this is not middle school any more.

 

[StanD]

Agreed. The sound science forum likes to spend a bit too much time talking about other posters instead of talking about the science.

It's one thing for people to get a little heated in talking about science. It's quite another when people start ganging up and calling someone a troll. Or when these "lounge" threads become discussions focused on saying negative things about another poster. Those types of activities deserve to have threads shut down. This is not a school yard, and this is not middle school any more.

We should simply ignore the troll like posts and report the disruptive poster to get them off the thread.

 

[RRod]

This is not a school yard, and this is not middle school any more.

 
I thought the same thing back when I started my job; how wrong I was!