GIVING ADVICE... VENTING

These forums are great and I have found the answer to many questions here.

What I don't think is great are the pseudo knowledgeable answers by "experts" WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN OR TOUCHED THE GEAR.

As an example, someone might write in, "I am sure that brand A is better than brand B because I have heard good things about brand A.

I WON'T PROVIDE FEEDBACK ABOUT A PIECE OF GEAR UNLESS I HAVE USED THAT GEAR.

We cannot all be experts but, we could limit our comments to gear with which we are familiar.

I've never been on DPReview but I hear that's a great place for ranting...

:p

RPCrowe wrote in post #8959009
These forums are great and I have found the answer to many questions here.

What I don't think is great are the pseudo knowledgeable answers by "experts" WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN OR TOUCHED THE GEAR.

As an example, someone might write in, "I am sure that brand A is better than brand B because I have heard good things about brand A.

I WON'T PROVIDE FEEDBACK ABOUT A PIECE OF GEAR UNLESS I HAVE USED THAT GEAR.

We cannot all be experts but, we could limit our comments to gear with which we are familiar.

Totally agree, with the catch that: If I've been researching some gear thoroughly, I may share what I know about it.

But I've seen people do it far too often. That, and I've gotten dinged at times for pimping a piece of gear I have/have had that I like and know performs well.

I think there are qualifiers as well that make me disagree with this post.

For example, if your talking about the weight of a camera or the position of the AF-ON button, you'd obviously have to use the camera - other wise the opinion your giving is just something you read somewhere.

If your comparing functionality, anyone who's gone to any of the websites that compares functions can see the data - and in this case their opinion is about which functions are more valuable to them.

If your comparing IQ between cameras, again there are many websites (including this one) that display images from various cameras that you can compare and offer your opinion on.

I think it would be a disaster if we were to discount the opinion of a professional photographer who has been taking pictures for years just because he or she doesn't have an XtI - for example.

In the same breath, there are people on this site who understand the technical/engineering aspects of digital imagery far better than I do. Can I discount their opinion because they don't own the same camera as me and have never used it?

I'm willing to listen advice from anyone. I learned long ago that you can find nuggets all over the place if you look everywhere.

WaltA...you must be a carpenter by trade...you just hit the nail right on the head. Very good comment. Stephen.

RPCrowe wrote in post #8959009
As an example, someone might write in, "I am sure that brand A is better than brand B because I have heard good things about brand A."

I agree with the comments posted above - I agree with the OP's general sentiment, but there are exceptions. One doesn't need first-hand experience of everything to be able to form valid opinion.

But the OP example quoted above doesn't really bother me too much. In an example like that, the person is stating that their opinion is based on having "heard good things." Where I really have an issue is when someone provides their opinion in such a way that it suggest first hand, direct knowledge when in fact it is based on "hearing things."

I think Walt was spot on, there are exceptions, also part of posting on a forum is getting comments from people like that.

The worst may be the "I've heard all these bad reports about" or "I've been hearing bad things about" posts.

stsva wrote in post #8961314
The worst may be the "I've heard all these bad reports about" or "I've been hearing bad things about" posts.

As long as the "advice" is clearly qualified as second-hand hear-say, I generally have no problem with it. It would be preferable if they could quantify what they've heard, rather than be vague about it, of course.

RPCrowe wrote in post #8959009
What I don't think is great are the pseudo knowledgeable answers by "experts" WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN OR TOUCHED THE GEAR.

I agree with the nature of your post, but in these cases how do you know that these people have never seen or touched the gear?

Mike

RPCrowe wrote in post #8959009
These forums are great and I have found the answer to many questions here.

What I don't think is great are the pseudo knowledgeable answers by "experts" WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN OR TOUCHED THE GEAR.

As an example, someone might write in, "I am sure that brand A is better than brand B because I have heard good things about brand A.

I WON'T PROVIDE FEEDBACK ABOUT A PIECE OF GEAR UNLESS I HAVE USED THAT GEAR.

We cannot all be experts but, we could limit our comments to gear with which we are familiar.

welcome to teh internet. lol. fortunately enough on this forum there are specific threads about specific gear where people who use that gear can give you a specyfic answer.

photoguy6405 wrote in post #8963402
As long as the "advice" is clearly qualified as second-hand hear-say, I generally have no problem with it. It would be preferable if they could quantify what they've heard, rather than be vague about it, of course.

I think it is reasonable to expect people who say things in public to limit themselves to what they personally know to be true.

But that provides more latitude that one might expect. For example, I know that there are reports that the Pentax 50/1.4 can't be adapted to the 5D without causing a mirror conflict. So, if someone asks about that, I might say, "I have heard reports that there is a conflict with the mirror in this case, so confirm that the lens will work on your camera before proceeding..." That is a statement that I personally know to be true--I have indeed heard those reports--and I think it is good advice. Not everyone might have seen the reports that I have seen.

But if I were to say, "Dude, the mirror will run into that lens", without having conducted the test myself, then I'm being deceptive, even if unintentionally.

(Of course, I have the lens and camera in question, so there is no excuse for not having tested it myself, but that's another story...)

So, for each statement I make, I ask myself, "Do I personally know this to be true?"

The sin is in presenting hearsay authoritatively as fact. When I see that, I challenge it.

Rick "thinking this falls under 'bearing false witness'" Denney

rdenney wrote in post #8966412
I think it is reasonable to expect people who say things in public to limit themselves to what they personally know to be true.

Ha! Might as well turn off the internet.

rdenney wrote in post #8966412
But that provides more latitude that one might expect. For example, I know that there are reports that the Pentax 50/1.4 can't be adapted to the 5D without causing a mirror conflict. So, if someone asks about that, I might say, "I have heard reports that there is a conflict with the mirror in this case, so confirm that the lens will work on your camera before proceeding..." That is a statement that I personally know to be true--I have indeed heard those reports--and I think it is good advice. Not everyone might have seen the reports that I have seen.

This is pretty much what I was getting at.

There are people who think WikiPedia is fact-based.

I think the Internet has blurred the line between fact-based, opinion-based and hearsay.

To paraphrase an old commercial "I'm not a photographer - but I play one on the Internet".

WaltA wrote in post #8968332
I think the Internet has blurred the line between fact-based, opinion-based and hearsay.

I think the Internet is a symptom, not a cause. Before the Internet, people tended to be overly credulous about subjects new to them and overly cynical about subjects they knew about. There's an old truism concerning media accuracy, which says that the media is accurate except on stories I really know about. Ignorance has always been with us, and so has deception.

It seems to me that on the whole, we are diminished because our better students are not getting the quality of education they did several decades ago. Nor are they being forced to do their own research and meet standards for that research. (The best students are overcoming this one way or the other, and the worst are probably better off now than they were decades ago.)

An appreciation for and a willingness to learn science and math, where there is no escape from or bypass around objective truth, is really on the decline in the U.S. That hasn't helped--people think that science questions can be resolved by expert testimony rather than verifiable experimentation. That has led to many distortions.

The most dangerous propagandists are those who write with authority but say things that are not objectively true. Some do it accidentally, and some are quite purposeful. Wikipedia is full of that sort of writing. There are subjects about which I can honestly lay claim to worldwide expertise and my attempts at contributing to wiki articles in those topic areas has been too frustrating to continue. It's also true on forums, of course. But too often we counter that by distrusting everything and then we are really in a prison of ignorance.

So, when I read a review about a piece of equipment, I look for specifics about how it works that fit with how I work. I ignore rants and unqualified praise equally. I have been known to buy something another person rejected in their review because their review was clear enough so that I knew it would work for me. But that is rare.

A review of my activity on this and other forums will show that for the few threads I read, I challenge what in particular sounds authoritative but is, in fact, questionable or wrong. I also build sand castles to hold back the incoming tides, too.

Rick "thinking those who are committed to the truth must stand up for it" Denney