"[Meta] TheSaltRoad"

#PokemonGO: I've noticed in the last several months that travelers on road have become increasingly hostile to other travelers within comments, notably those posts that are trapped on /new and score a 0 due to significant downvotes.I have seen users downvoted and mocked for not knowing "simple answers" or for questioning a phenomenon as a bug/glitch when it really wasn't.Sometimes the "simple questions" are downvoted under the argument that they aren't worthy of being on the front page. For one, such an opinion would actually equate to the action of abstaining from voting -- it's not spam, nor is it "great quality", so just leave it be. For one-and-a-half, that only applies to submissions, not comments. So there's no excuse for this behavior. For two, there is a lot to know about this game. There are questions people may never have even thought of asking, but would appreciate the answer to if they saw that question. Trying to suppress that keeps other travelers less knowledgeable about the game, and ironically, leads to another reason for common downvotes:Reposts. Reposted questions and topics are going to occur on a popular subreddit. You can't avoid it. That doesn't excuse hostility though. Let the traveler know about the search function, maybe even teach them how to use the search function to find their answers faster without needing to wait on a response from other travelers. You have to know though that reddit's native search is fairly limited, searching only the titles of posts and some metadata, not the text bodies. Of which a lot of posts use vague titles. A great way to find posts is with third party search engines that due tap into the text bodies of posts. You can use google or bing and add into your query site:reddit.com/r/thesilphroad to turn up results limited to TSR subreddit. You can also use search engines specialized for reddit, such as https://ift.tt/365OsRP like to run through a few different examples I've witnessed over the last several months that demonstrate the poor treatment of other travelers receive. I am using an archival resource because these users are often bashed into deleting their posts to avoid further negative karma and hostile replies, or they get enough reports that automod takes them down. This also is meant to not brigade posts even further, so please don't look these threads up on reddit just to do that. While the archival site doesn't show the total upvote and downvotes, any post that displays a score of 0 can be assumed to have been at least in the negatives by the time I saw it and decided to get it archived.https://ift.tt/2Rw6yHA user has a single gym in their city. They wanted to raid Rayquaza during raid hour, as advertised by Niantic, probably a couple of times thanks to the push notifications. But instead, it was a Snorunt. They come to TSR to learn about what is going on. Clearly, they do not know the answer, or they wouldn't be asking the question.This is a fair question. They did not make a claim that Raid Hour is bugged, but instead, they were asking if it is a bug. I can see the perspective of downvoting false claims and assumptions as spreading rumors, etc. But that does not apply in this example. And yet, our traveler who was excited to get a Rayquaza, and was knocked down when he saw only a Snorunt, is further kicked by the travelers here being hostile through downvotes and laughing at his ignorance.This was the user's second question asked in the subreddit. It was also their last.https://ift.tt/2G44Lnw is a new traveler who probably hasn't had much, if any, multiplayer interaction in the game. Another trainer joined him in a gym battle and was using a Lugia. His only experience with another Pokemon appearing along another was with the Smeargle Photobomb feature. So our trainer came to the road to find out what happened.Luckily, 2 straight-forward answers were given. They explained that someone else was attacking the gym with Lugia. Great! But we also get rhetorical replies and people calling the OP naive.Fortunately this user has hung around the road and hasn't yet been scared off. Unfortunately, many of his questions appear to be met with downvotes for being too basic or too uninformed. They achieved level 30 only a month ago, the post in question was 5 months ago.https://ift.tt/37gkYSU post started out negative, but it did get a little credit as a "worthy" question with a double digit positive score.It's a very straight forward question that makes only one assumption. They want to know how the notification limit works. Knowing this will answer their ultimate question of when they can get their best friend exp. The only assumption is that they hit the limit.Two of the initial replies question the fact that there is a notification limit. They assume they know better than the OP, when in fact, the reverse is true! Our travelers are not showing humility when they need to. No one knows everything about this game. It is perfectly fine to not know the answer to every question. It is also fine to add in your own question asking to learn more about this. But if you aren't going to try to further your own knowledge or at least be helpful to the OP, you don't need to contribute -- lurking is okay too. Check back in later to see if you can learn something new yourself. (And if you do consider checking back in, give it an upvote, as that means it was a question of some importance to you.) Of course, there could have been several hundred travelers that did practice this and did abstain from voting or posting; the view count just isn't accessible.https://ift.tt/2G6kQt4 is a mixed example. OP misspells a Pokemon's name, but in a way that you still knew what he meant. One of the first replies he gets is a "Who?" joke. Doesn't contribute at all here.However, it's a mixed example because the OP dismissed the answer they received as unreliable despite it being a well-received resource in the community. That answer actually came from me, and in my opinion, my following response could have been better measured by explaining the reputation that p337_info has in the community and as a resource manager. No one's perfect. We can all improve.https://ift.tt/2R9FSNK user is not aware of gym shaving. They question how they became a victim to it. Because they did not believe it possible before, they are very much surprised, and may have a tone of disbelief to their post. Wise replies should accept the stance OP is coming from and be mindful in how they answer it. There was only one reply that, rather than giving all the possible answers, tried to identify what the one answer would be by asking the OP for further questions. Unfortunately, that reply was not followed up on by OP. Some answers were rhetorical, as if the strategy to attack, run and repeat is known by every trainer.It looks like the OP did get the answers to their questions. But the replies they made, which I can only assume were the deleted ones not archived in time, probably weren't taken too kindly by the travelers.The OP in question here deleted their post and comments at the very least it seems, for the hostile response from the community.https://ift.tt/2RAKYld is a classic. OP discovers a brand new bug in the game. OP is downvoted to oblivion for not having proof of something unexpected happening. OP deleted the post as a result.OP is the first to report of evolving a Leafeon without being near a mossy lure. Redditors afraid of giving karma or attention to someone just lying for the heck of it downvote him to suppress some trollish actions. But that verdict that OP is trolling because he lacked proof goes entirely against the spirit of a research subreddit! Very few people, if any, are recording all their gameplay sessions. As such, if something unexpected happens, they probably won't have evidence beyond their word. At the very least, what we can do is bring this post to wider attention and hope that someone thinks of a way or just plays around with discovering a way to reproduce the reported bug.It wasn't but a few hours later that someone was able to provide video proof of the bug! But the damage was already done to the OP.Not everything needs to be done in giant leaps. We can take small steps as a community in researching things. Let's not be hostile because a new bug report is unbelievable. (Which is shocking to think of in a game that has more bugs than features). Let's also be mindful of taking back-and-forth steps of getting everyone on the same page. With each new feature release or event release, there will be people that need to learn "old" information. And as features or even bugs are explored, new or more accurate knowledge arises, it is likely people have learned the outdated information, even on the timescale of days or even hours. As such, if old information is now wrong and it is being posted as current information, politely follow up with the correct information and even a source to help stop the spread of the old information as misinformation.These are just a handful of examples I've witnessed in the last half year of negative experiences on the road. There have been many, many more. Commonly, I see posts that aren't suitable for the road shared on here. They're usually humorous pictures or casual observations/brags that are better submitted to another Pokemon Go subreddit (of which there are many). Unfortunately, very often these people get downvoted (which is actually fair for being a rule-breaking post) without getting direction on where they can share that content that they clearly wanted to share and being informed for the future about what they can share here. If you're one of the people that are reporting a post to reach the automod removal threshold, you can also take the time to reply to the post and help the OP out.But! These negative experiences are not representative of The Silph Road. There are a lot of great members in this community that share knowledge and resources and apply their wonderful skills to presenting that information through websites, infographics, text guides, datamines, articles, etc. And there are travelers that help out in the comments the best they can, when they know they have something to contribute.I write this post because this is a wonderful community. It's easier to address negative behavior by regular travelers early, rather than when it is common and perceived as acceptable behavior. All large and growing subreddits run through this regression-to-the-mean phenomenon, but I believe TSR can remain a high-quality, intellectually-inspiring, and warmly-welcoming subreddit. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2RqlTsU