Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[MED6753]

As for EEVBlog, do you and the others here frequent it still? I haven't looked at it since the big blowup other than spot reading the occasional thread that comes up in Google results for equipment I've looked up.

Yes, and participate. No reason not to, since there are still some interesting conversations and the prat whose catch phrase is "would you agree that..." has been banned again.

Unfortunately he has just popped on TekScopes asking an off topic question and still not being able/willing to use gurgle. Makes me want to post the traditional usenet question when somebody asks a question they could easily answer themself, i.e. "What time is it?", But there's no way that poster would take a hint, or even a LART.

Oh well.

Who is this masked man?

[tggzzz]

As for EEVBlog, do you and the others here frequent it still? I haven't looked at it since the big blowup other than spot reading the occasional thread that comes up in Google results for equipment I've looked up.

Yes, and participate. No reason not to, since there are still some interesting conversations and the prat whose catch phrase is "would you agree that..." has been banned again.

Unfortunately he has just popped on TekScopes asking an off topic question and still not being able/willing to use gurgle. Makes me want to post the traditional usenet question when somebody asks a question they could easily answer themself, i.e. "What time is it?", But there's no way that poster would take a hint, or even a LART.

Oh well.

Who is this masked man?

If you search for the phrase on EEVBlog forum, one moniker comes up repeatedly. His previous incarnation was t*z. Nuff said

Mind you, I have to admit that I've started using the imperfect "ignore poster" and "ignore thread" options over there, mainly as a means of prompting myself not to respond to a pratt.

[Robert]

Went into my storage unit yesterday to get a couple mercury displacment contactors for a mate. Found a couple of HP41C calculators too. Must have a look at them.
I really need to clear some of that storage out. Anyone want a fuel quantity test set (electromechanical capacitance bridge and subsitution capacitor)?

[Zenith]

As for EEVBlog, do you and the others here frequent it still? I haven't looked at it since the big blowup other than spot reading the occasional thread that comes up in Google results for equipment I've looked up.

Not exactly frequent it. I look at it from time to time and contribute occasionally. I generally avoid the TEA section. The big blow up left a nasty aftertaste. However, there's much of genuine value there and there's no point in cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[Zenith]

Who is this masked man?

More to the point, who cares?

[mnementh]

Sorry, I have to be boring and I know I'm teaching you how to suck eggs.

Posting a yootoob vid. Oh, the indignity!

Of course you are! I don't need Dave to show me how to blow up a scope, gorramm it; I can do that just fine all by myself!

mnem

We know you know. Does the inexperienced kid know?

Probably not. I advised mum to direct him to seek out some beginner-level "How to use an oscilloscope" videos before he tries to use it; but truth is, if he's anything like I was, he'll have to murder the damned thing and then fix it before he'll learn his lesson. The 54600 is probably one of the safest possible choices for that as well.

mnem
tzzzzzzzt...

[mnementh]

What prizes did you come away with?

A few bits and bobs...

That's a nice pickup and a very kind thing to give that scope to that kid as a surprise gift. I hope he enjoys it. Do you know if he had anything to use it on, something he could safely probe to get a couple of interesting traces on the display?

The kid had the car literally packed to the gunwales with all sorts of stuff; so much so that I helped mum relevel the load so she could see out the rear-view mirror and so that a number of large items weren't just waiting for her to hit the brakes and brain both of them. Def plenty of solid-state battery-op stuff to play with, but also def some stuff where high voltage could be a hazard. So, a lot like me when I went to the local dump looking for radios and dumpster-diving behind Radio Shack.

I didn't talk with the kid at that point; mum was kindof stressed and wanted to hit the road so they'd be home before dark, and she said she'd have to talk him down from whatever had him engrossed inside the museum.

mnem
sometimes all you can do is plant a seed of kindness and hope it takes root.

[MED6753]

I never read any of this until last night. Sure does bring back a host of unpleasant memories. I even had that caffeine addicted Aussie try to rip me a new one. I ignored him.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/tea/discu ... a-threads/

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/tea/emptiness/

[25 CPS]

As for EEVBlog, do you and the others here frequent it still? I haven't looked at it since the big blowup other than spot reading the occasional thread that comes up in Google results for equipment I've looked up.

Not exactly frequent it. I look at it from time to time and contribute occasionally. I generally avoid the TEA section. The big blow up left a nasty aftertaste. However, there's much of genuine value there and there's no point in cutting off your nose to spite your face.

As I said, I do occasionally read threads there when they come up in response to search terms, so I'm not cutting my nose off to spite my face in that respect. This most recently happened a couple of days ago when I was trying to find information on that Amber test set, for example and that's what started me wondering about participation over there. What I have noticed over the last couple of years is when I've landed on a thread of interest and I've pushed the reply button and been about to start typing a response, I've always had second thoughts and carried on with what I was originally doing instead. Some of the things said generally and two specific posts in particular put me off, and one of them about how the forum would be better off without me there is what's made me stop and reconsider posting.

[Zenith]

Sometimes I go there through a Google search. Other times I go there directly and search. There's a lot of useful information there that doesn't always turn up in a Google search. Occasionally I skim through it and see if there's anything of interest. I may contribute if I consider I have something to say.

[mnementh]

TEA that Was is exactly that... TEA that WAS.

The community that was there is no more, because the owner of the land we were sharecropping on didn't feel those members and what they'd contributed were worth even the trouble of seriously investigating the claims of abuse of the moderation and reporting mechanism.

Instead, because we never bothered them with trivial shit but dealt with it ourselves, only the voices of petty whiners reached their ears, and our community of tolerance was destroyed by hamfisted authoritarian mods acting only on the gripes of intolerant children.

And to add insult to injury, we were blamed for fostering and defending the tolerance that those petty children could not stand.

Is it any wonder some of us have no interest in creating free content to make profit for those who destroyed our community?

mnem
TEA that Was lives in our hearts.

[Zenith]

It became far too cumbersome as a single thread. For instance someone might start a discussion on restoring an HP spectrum analyser, where he got stuck because a plastic cam switch was broken. That would turn into a discussion about various glues, whether it could be plastic welded, whether it could be 3D printed, whether there was some cheap item which could be bought which contained this switch. When that was dealt with he'd carry on with the rest of the restoration. Intermixed with that would be another discussion about a Nixie based counter someone was attempting to convert to 7 segment LEDs because the Nixie tubes were unobtainable. Someone would comment what a nice workbench he had and there would be a series of posts about workbenches. Then there'd be discussions about swapmeets and other things mixed in.

If you were interested in the topic of the thread it could be difficult to follow.

As you say, DJ ignored the TEA thread, even though it had a lot of posts and a lot of hits. People with few posts complained and were taken seriously, which was a mistake. One of the moderators turned up and dealt with things with a heavy hand, and not knowing much about it, and made a lot of regular contributors very angry.

DJ later tried to address the problems and have a TEA subsection, but the damage was done. It could have been averted by starting the TEA subsection a year earlier.

Interesting to reflect on maybe, but basically water under the bridge.

[tautech]

It became far too cumbersome as a single thread. For instance someone might start a discussion on restoring an HP spectrum analyser, where he got stuck because a plastic cam switch was broken. That would turn into a discussion about various glues, whether it could be plastic welded, whether it could be 3D printed, whether there was some cheap item which could be bought which contained this switch. When that was dealt with he'd carry on with the rest of the restoration. Intermixed with that would be another discussion about a Nixie based counter someone was attempting to convert to 7 segment LEDs because the Nixie tubes were unobtainable. Someone would comment what a nice workbench he had and there would be a series of posts about workbenches. Then there'd be discussions about swapmeets and other things mixed in.

If you were interested in the topic of the thread it could be difficult to follow.

As you say, DJ ignored the TEA thread, even though it had a lot of posts and a lot of hits. People with few posts complained and were taken seriously, which was a mistake. One of the moderators turned up and dealt with things with a heavy hand, and not knowing much about it, and made a lot of regular contributors very angry.

DJ later tried to address the problems and have a TEA subsection, but the damage was done. It could have been averted by starting the TEA subsection a year earlier.

Interesting to reflect on maybe, but basically water under the bridge.

Yet in many ways that was its attraction....follow it or miss what was going on.

[Zenith]

It became far too cumbersome as a single thread. ........................

Interesting to reflect on maybe, but basically water under the bridge.

Yet in many ways that was its attraction....follow it or miss what was going on.

Usually I found it engaging, sometimes infuriating. Generally I can filter out and skim past things I'm not interested in, so no need for moderators to pitch in. One enormous thread catering to all aspects of TEA and the various diversions was unwieldy.

A few weeks back I started a thread on a Keithley 179 bench DMM. MED added a discussion about a Keithley 175. It turned to LEDs vs LCDs. Then it turned to documentation, then comments in code and whether GOTO was ever justified. Then it fizzled out. If you were interested in a Keithley 179 or 175 you could find it with a search. There were only 34 posts (quite a lot for a thread on a specific piece of equipment) and you could fairly easily see where the relevant posts ended.

[mnementh]

It became far too cumbersome as a single thread. For instance someone might start a discussion on restoring an HP spectrum analyser, where he got stuck because a plastic cam switch was broken. That would turn into a discussion about various glues, whether it could be plastic welded, whether it could be 3D printed, whether there was some cheap item which could be bought which contained this switch. When that was dealt with he'd carry on with the rest of the restoration. Intermixed with that would be another discussion about a Nixie based counter someone was attempting to convert to 7 segment LEDs because the Nixie tubes were unobtainable. Someone would comment what a nice workbench he had and there would be a series of posts about workbenches. Then there'd be discussions about swapmeets and other things mixed in.

If you were interested in the topic of the thread it could be difficult to follow.

As you say, DJ ignored the TEA thread, even though it had a lot of posts and a lot of hits. People with few posts complained and were taken seriously, which was a mistake. One of the moderators turned up and dealt with things with a heavy hand, and not knowing much about it, and made a lot of regular contributors very angry.

DJ later tried to address the problems and have a TEA subsection, but the damage was done. It could have been averted by starting the TEA subsection a year earlier.

Interesting to reflect on maybe, but basically water under the bridge.

You forget the part where he moved the TEA thread from its nice cozy little "General Discussion" hole in the back of the server next to the perpetual-motion and conspiracy nutters (where, IMO, it belonged) and put it right on the top page in the mainstream TE Forum. We were happy hiding out in the back room where you had to know to go looking for us; we did not need to be slash-dotted like that.

Moving us to the TE forum and then bludgeoning us with the OT hammer was entirely the owner's doing. Full stop. Then not listening when we told him what he was doing was the "murdered" part.

As for legit TE repair and discussion, we had an established solution for that as well, which even the class clown (me) followed and it worked; collect your work into a separate "serious work" topic in the TE Section where it belonged.

It was the free-form "nerds at play" format that made it so appealing. You could ask a random question and not immediately get dogpiled with "this question needs to be moved to x subforum" and then the question goes ignored. You could bitch aboot something... even politics... and not immediately get bludgeoned. It was okay that the SNR was low; this was the place for that.

Until the "anything but moderate" moderators got involved.

mnem
I never was interested in being "mainstream"...

[tggzzz]

Making the thread sticky was, IMHO, ill advised.

Moving the thread somewhere was not something I noticed; I just use the "new replies" and "new posts" buttons.

The "moderation" was a mistake and a bit heavy handed, but not especially surprising. The mod apologised and stepped aside from moderating. We all make mistakes.

There is, of course, a wider range of posts Over There, and some of the posters and posters are extremely experienced, and some of the threads are very interesting. There are also a wider range of irritating idiots over there; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face; I still read and post there - and here.

Memo to self: get a life.

[tautech]

Making the thread sticky was, IMHO, ill advised.

Moving the thread somewhere was not something I noticed; I just use the "new replies" and "new posts" buttons.

The "moderation" was a mistake and a bit heavy handed, but not especially surprising. The mod apologised and stepped aside from moderating. We all make mistakes.

There is, of course, a wider range of posts Over There, and some of the posters and posters are extremely experienced, and some of the threads are very interesting. There are also a wider range of irritating idiots over there; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face; I still read and post there - and here.

Memo to self: get a life.

Still today the TEA thread has 10x the replies and 3.5x the views of any other thread and with that popularity it was a no brainer to have been made a sticky.
TEA is where it's always been but Dave tried to coax us to a new TEA thread that's now in a child board in General Chat and we'd have none of that and this TEA forum was born.

[tggzzz]

Stickiness draws newbies attention, and indicates that the thread has important information with a long lifetime, that will be of interest to many people. The TEA thread did not have those attributes.

In contrast, the TEA thread was largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos.

The core mistake was to equate/conflate quantity with quality.

[MED6753]

Stickiness draws newbies attention, and indicates that the thread has important information with a long lifetime, that will be of interest to many people. The TEA thread did not have those attributes.

In contrast, the TEA thread was largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos.

The core mistake was to equate/conflate quantity with quality.

Who you calling a wierdo?

Yep, I am.

[tautech]

Stickiness draws newbies attention, and indicates that the thread has important information with a long lifetime, that will be of interest to many people. The TEA thread did not have those attributes.

In contrast, the TEA thread was largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos.

The core mistake was to equate/conflate quantity with quality.

So, attention to what ?
To the forum is a good thing yet how many newbies did we ever welcome in the TEA thread ?

[tggzzz]

Stickiness draws newbies attention, and indicates that the thread has important information with a long lifetime, that will be of interest to many people. The TEA thread did not have those attributes.

In contrast, the TEA thread was largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos.

The core mistake was to equate/conflate quantity with quality.

So, attention to what ?
To the forum is a good thing yet how many newbies did we ever welcome in the TEA thread ?

1) To whatever is sticky, cf to what ever is bold!

2) Yup, and that's why it shouldn't have been sticky.

[nixiefreqq]

had to look up "sticky" as it relates to a blog.

does that make me a weirdo....or just old as dirt?

ps I liked it being sticky.

[Zenith]

Stickiness draws newbies attention, and indicates that the thread has important information with a long lifetime, that will be of interest to many people. The TEA thread did not have those attributes.

In contrast, the TEA thread was largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos.

The core mistake was to equate/conflate quantity with quality.

All sorts of discussions between people with particular interests might be dismissed as "largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos". Chess, bee keeping, using and maintaining vintage cars, and so on. I've stayed with friends and been asked to sort out an electrical problem and have been shocked to find out they didn't have a £5 naff DMM and not even a crappy analogue 1kOhm/V meter. An electric soldering iron; they'd heard of these things, but never would it have crossed their mind to buy one. I don't understand how a civilised existence can be maintained without these essentials but there we are. They were surprised to be told I had half a dozen soldering irons, various sorts of solder, and numerous multimeters and still considered myself ill-equipped. Had they told me the weekend was to be delightfully punctuated with fixing things, I could have come loaded for bear.

"Quantity has a quality of its own", to quote Stalin. I think it was a quirky, active sub-community. I never got the impression newbies were treated with hostility, but it wasn't the section they'd turn up in to invite suggestions about fixing hair curlers, which by any reasonable calculus should just be thrown away. I'd guess a few people were drawn there through Google, some were of a similar view and stayed, others found other sections on the site more to their taste, but generally it was an asset from the POV of DJ. He seemed a bit peeved when the schism occurred.

[mnementh]

Stickiness draws newbies attention, and indicates that the thread has important information with a long lifetime, that will be of interest to many people. The TEA thread did not have those attributes.

In contrast, the TEA thread was largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos.

The core mistake was to equate/conflate quantity with quality.

So, attention to what ?
To the forum is a good thing yet how many newbies did we ever welcome in the TEA thread ?

I personally made it a point to welcome anybody who stayed more than a few posts... As for "thriving"... ummmm, when I left we were at 5200 pages. 2 years later, 5400. I will admit I did allow TEA to be quite a bit of a timesink sometimes, but you can't blame all of that on me.

mnem

[mnementh]

had to look up "sticky" as it relates to a blog.

does that make me a weirdo....or just old as dirt?

ps I liked it being sticky.

TEAnonymous was always sticky. Still is. Getting stickied was when it all went to hell.

mnem