The things I love about fodor's and the things I hate about Fodor's
 

I love visiting Fodor's for the insight and knowledge of experiance travelers that truely want to help novice travelers (like we are) get the most out of their vacations to new places.
I love reading the trip reports.
I love reading about the restaurants.
I love it when we are warned about scams.

I hate it when so called Fodor's regulars belittle posters for asking a question that doesn't fit into their idea of a place to visit or what to eat.

My momma always told me, if you don't have something helpful or nice to say... don't say anything at all!

Instead of just passing on making a helpful commit or suggestion some people here go out of their way to be rude,smartypants or just down right mean! I don't get it?

I love 98% of everything Fodor's and it's regular has to offer to us novice travelers however, The 2% of rude repliers makes it almost not worth coming here. That's just my opinion.

I would agree with you. You should have read some of the remarks I got on the US Forum because I didn't know what Ball Dropping was!!!

Um.... What is ball dropping?

Sounds like something that happens to a young boy?

football game in the rain...

OK, I'm not sure if I'm right...or justgrumpy...

But..sometimes...I get...a little..irritated, when people ask questions without (IMHO) doing any research. Is it the fault of Fodor's...maybe. Maybe the 'search' feature is not displayed well, I don't know. This forum has been around long enough that a LOT of questions have been asked and answered ad hominen. Maybe we need sub-pages where some of the common questions are answered in FAQ's (like how to get from CDG to hotel).

But when people say they want to go to Italy, where should they go....or that they need a reasonable hotel in Paris...have they researched anything at all? At least to say...looking at Rome and Venice...or something in the 6th around 200 euro?

I'm planning on going to Turkey in August. I'll be buying guides, reading posts, web-crawling...then I'll ask my questions. I wouldn't feel right saying "what should I do in Turkey" without having done any of the above and giving some idea of my plans.

I enjoy being able to offer any advice I can...but what is the 'responsability' of a Fodor's poster...none of us are travel agents, all of us are posters because we love travel. Is it rude for a poster to expect answers to such generic questions, which to me says they have not done a lot of research...or am I just grumpy...?

Today..my answer will be grumpy :)

If it isn't male puberty, is it New Years Eve in Times Square?

Fodor's is not my main travel site, but sometimes I snipe both here and at the other one when the questions are too intolerably lazy or stupid (not to be confused with naive).

"I'm going to Paris next week? What should I see? I heard somewhere that Parisians are nasty. Is this true? How can I stop them from robbing me?"

I have to agree with Kerouac and with Michel.

Some posters are simply needier than others such as the ones who insist on posting about their every single travel move and when nobody responds they top their own posts!

But if you think their question is stupid, just ignore it. It's not like any of us are paid travel agents having to work at this. I just post for fun and to try to help people with places I am familiar with. I don't mind if someone says "I am going to Tennessee, or KY, or Germany, what should I see?". I am sure people do research, but they also want to hear other people's opinions. You can of course politely ask for more information regarding their travel desires, but I see no reason to snap at people. Oops, I just snapped at the snappers :)

Ball dropping is a mystery to me.

Michael Paris: you are under no obligation to answer every, or any queries. If you think a query, or a poster, is stupid, don't answer. What's unpleasant is when people go out of their way to TELL people they're stupid. This is not the place to make these judgments.

As for frequently asked questions, the truth is, the answers change. The best wey to get from CDG to the hotel might not be running the month I'm there. The Bristol Industrial Museum might be closed until 2009 (grumble, grumble). A policy might have changed.

It's quite common, endemic even, on a list or forum, for long-time readers to be impatient with new arrivals asking old questions. It's not reasonable to expect new people to have spent the time to have read the amount of posts that you have over the past howevermany years; that's what makes them new. That's the whole point of a forum: helping new people find answers.

If there's something they're missing, even something incredibly basic like not having looked at a map, the best answer is not "I can't believe you came in here and disturbed us without even having looked at a map!" but rather "here's the name of a good map; go to Borders and buy it".

Not everybody is born knowing everything before they start out (unlike me, of course). Some people are traveling for the first time. Some people may in fact be operating at less than the maximum wattage, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve courtesy, even if they don't fully understand how to express it themselves.

I'm with Jaane on this one. My motto is "be slow to take offense, and slow to give it". I wish I lived up to it more often.

Unless they have MOVED CDG the answer about "the best way" to get from there to Paris probably hasn't changed all that much.

Fresh posters ARE doing research. Please take it easy on them. We don't want to discourage people from participating.
Some people are mean and some are nice, is it nature or nurture?

What is ball dropping?

I do not think it is rude to ask about a place even when the poster has done no research. The poster who does that probably thinks that's what this kind of site is for.

I also do not think anybody has a responsibility to answer a question he or she thinks is too vague or lazy or stupid. I do think I have a responsibility to answer whatever questions I decide to answer without making anyone feel bad about posting the question. If I can't do that, I shouldn't answer.

But I do not believe that the code of conduct I use for my own internet behavior can be imposed on anybody else.

There are people here who become really frustrated at things that don't bother me at all, such as vague questions or unresearched questions. They believe that asking such questions violates their code of internet behavior. But they are not going to be successful at imposing that code on people who do not subscribe to it, either because they haven't thought about it or because they have a different code.

For the new poster who encounters replies that make him or her feel bad, my best advice is to understand that you have to have a fairly thick skin on an internet forum, and if you approach it all with a sense of humor and keep at it a little while, it will get easier and become fun.

Hey, I'm a nice guy, really ! :)

Should the web page be re-organized? You have to admit, there are some questions that come up daily...if a re-org of this site would make first-timers find some of their answers...faster, that would be good no?

With 'Wiki' technology, we could do a Wiki_europe where answers to common questions (currency,ATM clothes, transport, hotels, restaurant recs) could be posted, and updated regularly.

Sligthtly less grumpy...

I have asked some incredible questions on various forums in the past (like where to buy cast iron Japanese-style teapots in large quantites in Bangkok -- for friends who were opening a café in Paris), but at least I have taken precautions to explain why I am asking a question that appears to be either outrageous or foolish and I have never received a nasty reply.

Some people just blurt out something stupid and some of us blurt right back. No offense should be taken in such a case. It is simply time to reformulate the question to receive an appropriate answer.

Sure, some of the answers could readily be found by doing a search, but I for one don't mind acting as a search engine for those who don't avail themselves to that feature. I mean, this is what this forum is all about- so what if the question's been asked a gazillion times. Just ignore it if it annoys you.

But who knows- I'm fairly new here...maybe I'll eventually end up jaded like some of the regs here.

If that ever happens, I hope I don't go out of my way to post a reply for the sole purpose of making an OP feel stupid.

(Okay, but if I do, please don't rub this post in my face.)

Bloom

If one poster asks a question without doing their research, maybe they are new to all of this...So be nice.

My Mom who is 62 and can hardly check her email went to a site and asked a question, someone thought it was stupid and was very mean, now SHE WON'T ask any questions...Not very nice.

If the questions are beneath you...let them be and don't answer.

JMHO.

Well what should I do in Turkey?

My feeling is that urging a new poster to do a search <i>is</i> being helpful. If they're asking a question that's been asked a thousand times before, chances are they aren't going to get the number or quality of answers that they can get by doing a search.

Once they've read through at least some of the old posts and are able to post more specific questions, they're going to get a lot more help. The regulars here are wonderfully generous with their time and their knowledge. But they're not getting paid to do this. Why should they feel it necessary to answer the same questions over and over?

Back to OP - Idaho Jane - this question or one very similar to it was asked on 2/3/02 so if you had done your research you wouldn't have wasted all the above respondees time and they could be answering better questions like, yes, what's the best way to go from CDG to the Hotel de Dernier Resort in the 15th district?