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Sky Gods

We do need a few real ‘Sky Gods’ around.

That way we get insight into flying that is outside our normal frame of experience with a level of certainty that it’s information and detail is not Bs.
We get information and advice which is targeted to real world issues where otherwise it may take reading a whole book to source similar information.
We also learn and are reminded to acknowledge that we don’t know, what we don’t know.

Unfortunately for me I don’t retain as much as I’d like of what I learn from insightful threads on here, but I do usually remember the information is there somewhere, if I need to go and search for it.

United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

but you never get any useful accumulation of knowledge

I’m not sure what you mean. Facebook is by nature transient. That is the purpose, a social media where you can (inter, to some some extent) act with others. It’s not meant to accumulate knowledge any more than people accumulating knowledge when chatting over a cup of coffee or a beer. The important thing is to interact, thus “knowledge” is presented to everyone, and it’s up to everyone to do whatever they please with it (“like” it or ignore it most of the time, but they have to do “something”).

I don’t really see the main difference with this site. We still have to use Google to search in any meaningful way in thousands of threads, some which are merged into mammoths of several hundred posts. The “knowledge” presented is 99% purely subjective opinions, or at best isolated experiences. Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with that. What I mean is this site is light years away from being some sort of magazine where the “knowledge” is objectively handled, accumulated and presented in a professional way. This site is still just a variation within the broader topic of “social media”. Facebook vs EuroGA, it’s more like tomayto, tomahto IMO.

I have never done any search for information or knowledge here for instance . ever. I came to this site by googling aviation fuel, only to end up in a thread that where mostly about (gang) bashing of TOTAL by some individuals from UK. As to knowlege content – zero. But, I’m still here. That is purely due to the transient interaction content.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

All compliments are welcome, LeSving, even obviously backhanded ones

An explanation of the search function can be found here. I truly hope you find it useful, because I have just done a search on
total card
and find this very useful thread.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

OK, maybe a bit backhanded I liked this explanation:

“You got a promotion! That’s adorable.” Unless you work at a baby kitten factory, and it therefore is literally adorable, this is not acceptable behavior.

What I meant to say in there somewhere was that I think you have to accept that different people have different views about what this site is to them. To me it is the very discussions and interaction that bring forth knowledge there and then. If the written threads should vanish into a hole only minutes after being idle for too long, it wouldn’t matter one bit to me. It’s already forgotten, but the effect of the discussion is not. That effect is not dependent on the physical existence of the thread. In Facebook the important thing is here and now. This is what get people engaged, while the past is the past and largely uninteresting because it serves no purpose. The purpose is already extracted. Meanings, opinions, expressions they all changes based on the discussions and expressions here and now, and that’s the main purpose. It’s alive, a kind of oddly shaped mirror of “social life” itself or an expression of it, and therefore very powerful.

I almost never read entire threads for instance. I never even open maybe 80%-90% of the threads, or I open them, read the first lines and forget them for the rest of time because there was nothing in there for me to discuss, nothing interesting to see. That people read threads to become “enlightened” somehow without themselves participating, I find it very odd, but maybe it’s true.

It’s maybe a little paradox then. Because IMO what makes this site better than many other, is the “obscurity” or lack of hard structure of this site. Very few menus they are obscure and broad in scope, and no sub menus, making it hard to find specialized information on a general basis. At VansAirforce there are 70-80 specialized categories in 9-10 main categories. It makes it 10 times easier to look for one particular thing, if you are looking for info. But discussion vise the “on topic nazi” moderators have iron fists, which kills off all off topic discussions. In effect it is much further away from “Facebook” than this site.

Anyway, this was also off topic.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

We do need a few real ‘Sky Gods’ around.

Yes, of course, but you are using a different definition of “sky god” Normally on aviation forums the term is a perjorative one.

Here on EuroGA we have a lot of very experienced pilots / aircraft owners / etc. This is great but unfortunately a few “large contributors” do things which are designed to place a forum mod in an impossible position.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

For whatever reason, everyone changes their stories slightly, to leave out the embarrassing or to make things look easier or harder. It’s only extreme examples that are a problem, or if done to put down others. If you know the person or background, it can be interesting from a psychological point of view as you see how that person wants to be seen by the rest of the world.

As my grandmother would say, think about other people before yourself – sometimes shortened to “don’t be rude”

EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

Fuji_Abound wrote:

the true hallmark of an expert is his ability to convey technical material in a way most people can understand (including those who might want to understand the full technical explanation, but prefer not to spend the time)

Truer words are not often written.

Much of the information posted here is not transient, especially in regards to destinations, but technical issues as well. I find the search function easy to use.

Tököl LHTL

EuroGA is a laymen’s forum for aviation. Sure, there are knowledgeable professionals in their field around, but mostly people who are in aviation in their free time and for fun. So basically the forum is full of “sky gods” in the original sense. That is okay, because it affects all special interest laymen-forums and it is fun to discuss things you like to do, and especially in aviation you have many successful people who develop strong opinions, even if they are far from expert. And those strong opinions are often packed in eloquent language.

An expert on his field needs more effort to debunk a layman’s strong notion in an online forum that that layman needs to be stubborn. That’s why they sometimes get grumpy over explaining the same sh.. all over again to someone with a strong but basically unfounded opinion. Noone pays for the expertise, so it often is “eat it, pay it or leave it, but don’t waste my time”. Thus these forums get filled with sky gods over time.

mh
Aufwind GmbH
EKPB, Germany

An expert on his field needs more effort to debunk a layman’s strong notion in an online forum

He does not.

Especially if the expert is likely to get some business afterwards

Noone pays for the expertise

They do if you get business via the participation. The problem is that most “industry” people want the business, but without participating generally.

Like most people here, I am not stupid, mh, and I see exactly who you are referring to. As I have written before many times, social media is today key to getting business. But the participation needs to be done well, politely, usefully, helpfully, etc, etc. If the contributor has a habit of turning a technical disagreement (or a question on detail whose answer may reveal an element of less than complete disclosure in his original post) into a personal attack on the questioner, then on a moderated forum he’s going to get into trouble sooner or later. If one wants to get business via forum participation, beating up people (especially beating up the mods) is not the optimal way to do it. If I was making 5 figures a year of business from some forum (as I know this guy was) I would contribute an awful lot and be totally polite about it

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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