Rating the experts

[C. Ross]

A couple of recent threads -- powerwashing, screws, a couple of guys with bad bottoms looking for quick fixes -- haven't turned out so well. You know, advice not taken, harsh words, hurt feelings, broken crockery.

This forum is really unusual and appealing because professionals with decades of experience rub shoulders with rank newbies. It's part of the charm, but also means that guys come here with firmly held bad ideas for good boats, and experts can flame newbies in a crossfire over CPES or varnish vs. oil.

Sure it would be great if everyone came with a thick skin willing to learn, or if all advice was wise, persuasive and gentle. But that doesn't happen always.

The software used for the forum allows post rating, and user reputation. It's used to help readers sort out who's who, and identify which advice is most reliable. Would it help if Scot turned it on here? Would the good advice rise to the top, or would we get less dialogue or otherwise hurt this forum?

[The Bigfella]

I just rated this thread as excellent

[Woxbox]

Whoa! You mean to suggest that the number of posts you've made doesn't equate with your level of expertise?

Seriously, I find this place to be pretty civil. I peek through the door into the Sailing Anarchy site from time to time, and it looks like a barroom brawl on many days. But there too, are folks with lots of experience and a willingness to share.

I'd rather see it left wide open, and let visitors and long-term members alike figure out what's what.

[Bob Cleek]

Good idea, but we'd need two credibility rating systems, one for above decks and one for the bilge! LOL

[JimD]

The software used for the forum allows ... user reputation.

Ross, I have a reputation as a mumbler, and a senior one at that. And I feel I've earned it. Are you suggesting someone should be able to take that away from me after I've invested years of semi coherent rambling to this forum? Who among us could claim to be Caesar and do such a thing?

[C. Ross]

JimD - ratings are by peers, not Caesar, of course. Wouldn't be worth it if long term sensible folks felt they were losing something if rated.

I read a LOT of posts and search old threads, but sometimes still have trouble discerning the sterling advice from snakeoil in areas new to me.

Any other opinions?

[S B]

When I was a small boy I asked my father what the difference between amateur and professional was, he simply stated "A professional knows how to hide his mistakes." A the time I had now idea what he was talking about,I do now. I have also come to realize that, twenty years of doing something wrong isn't twenty years experience, and I follow no advice blindly. I also expect anyone reading my comments to evaluate the information before using it.

[Yeadon]

I give this thread four out of five stars, but expect it to drop to three stars, then two, almost immediately.

[pcford]

When I was a small boy I asked my father what the difference between amateur and professional was, he simply stated "A professional knows how to hide his mistakes."

A lot of truth to that. Also a professional knows how to avoid difficulty.

[Yeadon]

Still sitting strong at four stars, but the quality barometer is falling slowly.

Probably the most important lesson I ever learned was knowing when to tell a client "no, you're just not being realistic here." You can't let them bargain you into failure.

Sorry, what was this thread about again? I've got to give it up and get some sleep.

[Ray Frechette Jr]

Well let's see, Ranking by the users. Majority rules.

I think Franklin once said if 100 people believe a stupid idea it only proves the 100 fools.

Or something to that effect...

And I also once heard that if you preface any remark that Franklin once said it, it is more widely accepted as true.

[Ray Frechette Jr]

In my opinion, Thsi forum is helpfull in getting a lot of ideas. Then you have to sift through to determine the good ones.

[Thorne]

Seems a total waste of time. While we are at this sort of thing, can we determine the length of a piece of string? Define the word "ship" compared to "boat"? How about "skiff"???

No way to rate 'experts' when you've got amateurs trying to (sorta) follow their advice -- the results will always be mixed. I've been given some **excellent** advice here that I've blithely ignored...and paid the price when stuff broke, leaked, or otherwise failed. My fault, but how many newbies will admit that?

[Canoez]

As Thorne points out, the advice thing is sometimes tough to translate to technique - particularly if you cannot see it being done. I was helping someone do something that I almost take for granted last night - he's never done it before.

Even after showing tips and techniques on what we were doing, he still needed a lot more practice and I'd hate to see what would have happened if I just wrote things down.

So, first is finding realiable advice from the cloud of information that gets posted and second is being able to apply what you've read or seen successfully without having tried it before.

Oh, yeah - and hoping that somebody didn't leave a step out. :rolleyes:

[Thermo]

I just rated this thread as excellent

This is the internet. You're supposed to use the hip internet terminology! If the thread is good, it's 'made of win,' otherwise it's 'made of fail."

For extreme cases, it's acceptable to add the term 'epic;' as in 'epic win' or 'epic fail.'

If your threads are consistently made of win, you are a 'winrar' and you win "ten internets".

The rules are fuzzy, and sometimes apply to individual posts as well as whole threads. For example, my post here has nothing to do with 'building/repair,' therefore it's made of fail.

[mmd]

<tongue firmly held in cheek...

It has been my casual observation that the more adamant a poster is that their opinion/method/material is the best and all others are shuffling morons, the less professional credentials that poster has.

Seriously, though, if you want stellar advice you should contact a pro experienced in that subject and be prepared to pay for the advice. If not, and you solicit free expertise from anonymous web-posters, you are risking getting what you are paying for.

[paladin]

I deliberately will not post if someone asks questions about carvel or otherwise conventional construction....all my work has been plywood and strip planked cold moulded......but sometimes I have a difficult time containing myself when someone comes on line with a carvel planked boat and wants to epoxy or cpes fill rotted wood etc....and some folks tell them to go ahead and fill the punky areas with epoxy....just as an example......

[JimD]

JimD - ratings are by peers, not Caesar, of course...

I meant to call you Mr. Ross, or C. Ross. In my confused state I imagined your first name to be Ross. Hope I didn't sound terse.:)

[G. Schollmeier]

Boatdesign.net has such a system. It started out slow, now the people with the highest rating are the ones that post the most risqué pictures. The short cut to knowledge and wisdom is not short. You have to put in the time and develop your own opinions. Gone are the good old days when THE COMMITTEE would make those decisions for us. ;-)
Gary :D

[Tom Robb]

Peer rating will quickly turn into the Jr. Highschool lunchroom where cliques rule. Free advice is like life - it's what you make of it.
I've had to deal with some hard-assed old timers. Generally you're better for it even if it doesn't feel fun at the time.
That "Millenial Gen." observation may be on point.

[Wild Wassa]

If anyone was an expert here, the last thing that they would do would be to work with wood.

The real experts go sailing ... the psudo experts continually work on boats.

Warren.

[C. Ross]

Hope I didn't sound terse.:)

Hardly so...and I'm not thin-skinned.

[C. Ross]

Well, the consensus is pretty clear. I appreciate Gary's reference to boatdesign.net. While I've seen peer ratings or similar work really well on technology related sites, seems pretty clear that it would be a dud here.

Caveat emptor, y'all!

[Bob Cleek]

The Wooden Boat Forum is a discussion forum. While in large measure it is what we feel like making it, a do-it-yourself help-line it never was and still ain't. We who have made this forum what it is aren't necessarily in the business of investing our time 24/7 to walk the completely inexperienced and utterly ungrateful through projects they have undertaken, often far beyond their skills and abilities, while at the same time arguing with them over the way they want to do it versus the answer they were given when they asked.

Free advice is worth what you pay for it and its price is gratitude.

There have been some really great threads over the years in which people who DO know what they are talking about went at it hammer and tong disputing open issues on which even the experts don't agree (e.g. CPES vs. thinned varnish). These discussions developed out of shared interests, not just somebody dropping in out of thin air and asking how to do something. Sometimes, a lot of really valuable informaton was shared in the course of disputing one proposition or another. There are many things upon which reasonable minds may differ.

To its detriment, as the internet becomes more of a "go to for how to" place, there have been a lot more totally ignorant people posting how to do it questions without exhibiting the slightest evidence of having attempted to research the correct answer themselves by using the search feature or the FAQ's. These folks used to be rather far and few between. Not so much anymore. A lot of their questions aren't worth the time to answer, having been already answered long before, repeatedly, or being too stupid to entertain. When they perceive that reaction, they have the timerity to become outraged because they aren't being "respected" by established forum participants, some with over a decade of history in here, and proceed to flame them as "a good old boys' club" and so on.

By contrast, some of the "old timers" may remember Cape Hatteras. He was a young kid, I mean really young, like fourteen or so, who somebody had given a beaten up Penn Yann runnabout. He knew little about restoring it, but he was willing to listen and learn. And learn he did. Guys came out of the woodwork to help that kid. I think somebody even gave him an old outboard motor and somebody else went by his place to show him a thing or two. I don't know what ever happened to him, but he really was an unofficial mascot for a while.

If one DOES have information with which to respond, it becomes extremely exasperating to share it and then have a few people (yes, with low post numbers) pile on disputing it, often just to argue without any real point. In short order, knowledgeable people say, "The hell with it."

A good example of this is the "weekly house paint post." It goes like something like this... "Home Despot has a sale on latex house paint. Can I use it on my wooden topsides?" Somebody then gives them a considered response on why traditional oil based alkyd paints are the preferred option. (Or somebody like me tells them straight up they are cheap fools who have no business owning a wooden boat if they have to cut corners on a can of paint.) Then another clown chimes in with, "Sure you can! Don't believe these elitist snobs who say otherwise." while another wrings his hands over global warming and the damage to the environment wrought by VOC's. And yet another takes on the "old fart traditionalists who refuse to admit anything better has been invented in the last hundred years." And so it goes, until somebody finally says, "Hell, it's your boat. Smear monkey crap on it for all we care." It doesn't take long for people who know what they are talking about to just say, "Screw it." Consider how many have, beginning with The Chemist!

Few are experts on everything, but many are experts on a few things. If you want to know who the experts are, shut up and listen.

[Bob Cleek]

"The real experts go sailing ..."

And if they are REALLY experts, in no-maintenance fibreglass boat!

"...the people with the highest rating are the ones that post the most risqué pictures. "

That would sure save me a bunch of time in the bilge, searching for cheesecake!

[C. Ross]

Bob

Your funny and smart post is what I was trying to get at with this thread.

When I first showed up (under a different name, before deciding that a pseudonym wasn't for me) I asked a bunch of dumb as a hammer questions. (I still ask dumb questions.)

I remember you and Jay Greer responded to one of my doozies with answers that are now clearly obvious but were mysterious to me at the time. Somebody actually wrote "hey listen to these guys, they're experts who should be listened to". I was grateful for the advice, and the tip on who to listen to.

When a new guy is headed down a sketchy path, I think I'm going to do more "Yeah, what he said" posts to try to point out the people I respect. An informal ratings scheme.

[Paul Girouard]

Bob, damned your a hoot! :D

Ya what Bob said , here , here. Or is it hear , hear?? What ever eh!:rolleyes:

Now about that house paint , I heard if you add a pinch of ( ) and a dash of ( ) it really>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> :>>>>>>)))))))

[buildaholic]

From personal experience...

If you start your posting tenure here with, "what tools should I buy?" You ain't building a boat. If you spend the first year here posting pictures of the progress on your boat building shed, you ain't building a boat, and chances are high you never will. My father once opined that for every boat that gets built there are probably fifty sets of plans sold, thirty of those sets to people who think they are building a boat.

What does this have to do with the topic at hand? Well, lots really. The type of questions one asks usually betrays the level of investment one has in the project at hand (and somtimes the level of intellect of the poster as well).

I can attest to the fact that every question I have ever asked on this forum was answered correctly, and somewhere else in the post incorrectly. It was up to me to learn to tell the difference. The solution was to read literally everything posted by everyone for a substaitial amount of time. After a while it became clear who were the masters and who were the posers.

In light of the amount of time building even a small boat like a canoe or kayak takes, there are plenty of evenings worth of time for any worthy builder to do their homework, both here and in other reputable places.

People often say to me (when looking at one of my humble boats), "I wish I could do something like that." My reply is always the same, "You can, you just don't want to do the long hard work." There just are no shortcuts... not in boatbuilding, nor in forum posting.

I remember Cape Hattaras, his enthusiasm was inspiring. Thanks Bob for bringing such a plesant memory back to the surface.

Paul Frederiksen

[holzbt]

Cleek sums it up well with this quote.
"Few are experts on everything, but many are experts on a few things. If you want to know who the experts are, shut up and listen."

After seeking advice/info on this forum the best thing you can do is a little research. Read past posts from those offering advice. You'll quickly learn who knows a thing or two about a thing or two. There are some very knowledable/talented folks on this forum but there voices are often drowned out by all the garbage from the "experts". It's a shame that so much of the old forum is lost as many of the early forumites were true proffesionals in the wooden boat field. Many just faded away as the garbage started piling up. There is still some very good advise available here, you just have to dig for it sometimes.

[switters]

Agree with digging for information, if we are wishing for things here either a more enhanced search function or, I'm willing to admit that it may be me, better instructions for using the search function.

Some examples of things I have downloaded because I know I'll never find the thread again. Sharpening planes, polytarp sails, and painting with a squeegee.

then us house paint tiny boat fools wont bother posting the same question over and over.

but what if I use latex over epoxy....;) j/k

[JimD]

... polytarp sails and ... house paint...

You'll never stay on top of the leader board saying this sort of thing.

[Yeadon]

Polytarps are the way of the future. You people need to open your eyes.

House paint, well ... I just can't get behind that.

[JimD]

...House paint, well ... I just can't get behind that.

You just have to stay away from the Martha Stewart line.

[pcford]

I'v ementioned this before but it bears repeating:

Even with 35 years in the restoration business, I am absolutely shameless when it comes to answering a question when I come up against a new problem. And yes, that happens regularly; boat restoration is a bottomless pit as far as required knowledge goes.

When I have a problem I asked everyone that I feel can furnish a reasonable answer. From the several answers, I then eliminate a couple of the answers that are obviously out of "left field." I then sort the rest according to what makes sense according to my experience and preferences.

When I first started in this business, I would be amazed at owners taking unexamined advice from guys that come wandering down the dock. And then having me follow some stupid suggestion from the "dock captain." In those days I felt like I could not contradict the owner's wishes.....a practice certainly endured as a matter of course anymore: An owner wanted to put smoked glass on his Chris barrelback. I told him that it would make the boat look like a pimpmobile. He was told if he wanted to do that, he could do it himself outside on the street.

Here on the Wooden Boat Forum we have a broad range of talent...from absolute duffers to bs artistes to very talented amateurs to some of the best professionals in the business.

You need to sort out the advice. That's what upset people in the original thread on which this thread refers.

[Bill R]

Few are experts on everything, but many are experts on a few things. If you want to know who the experts are, shut up and listen.

Well said Mr. Cleek.

[AussieBarney]

If I may offer an opinion, I am what would be described as "A fool with pretensions to granduer" I know a bit about woodworking, my daddy is and ws a master woodcarver. On this thread we have some the most knowledgable men I have ever had the pleasure of reading, and some who dont know their a** from their elbow:D A person has to read the thread and then sit in their thinking chair and look at their project, the questions that arise with me are, Does it fit with what I am trying to acheive, Can I afford it, What is MY goal, dream or outcome and then sift it out. The correct answer is invariably there. I lurk and read any and all threads so that I can increase my knowledge. I might add that I, forever stand in debt to thge men and women who are willing to share their hardwon and qiute often expensive knowledge and experience, Viva le Forum Barney