Is The Culture Of This Forum Supposed To Be Snarky

[Dynon101]

Hi Dynon,

I am a newbie to the Dynon product line and to this forum. To educate myself on the expensive products I just bought and to get my airplane flying safely I have read almost all of the posts on this forum.

Some of the guys on this forum are "the salt of the earth" and are pleasant, helpful, and nice...however...there are also some real, shall we say "difficult" people on this forum (bless their hearts)...and it is not just one or two but a bunch of "those guys"...

From the perspective of a Newbie, it seems like the "culture" or "spirit" of this forum IS ALLOWED to be kinda "snarky" and some people are just downright mean.

The questions I have are:

-Is this the "culture" that Dynon wants to have on their product forum?

-Is this the culture of the Dynon company itself?

-Is this becomming the culture of General Aviation pilots?

The Dynon folks really did a good job writing the manuals however these systems are so complex with so many options and variables that it is impossible for an installation manual to address every possible design.

When a person builds an airplane they not only read the Dynon manual(S) but they also read and study literally THOUSANDS OF PAGES of various other manuals and it is really impossible for a human to digest and retain so much information.

That is why Dynon provided us with a user forum where the Newbies (like me) can ask the Experts questions and the experts volunteer their time (in the same way people volunteer their time for charity work) and the experienced folks are essentially "mentors" and they help other out the other guys and "pay it forward" ...then the Newbies become more knowledgeable and help the next generation, and the next, and then everyone learns and the whole community benefits.

I do not think the "culture" of General Aviation is snarky...yes you get a couple of bone heads out there...however my guess is that in the aggregate most people in GA are kind, nice, and helpful and that is why people pay a hundred dollars to fly to some distant airport to have breakfast with other people.

If most people in GA were like some on this forum then the airport restaurants would all go out of business.

In most organizations, communities, workplaces, and clubs the "culture" of the group is promoted by the authority/leaders.

If the leaders want the culture/spirit of the group to be nasty they allow it to migrate in that direction.

It is really easy to spot an organization with a positive leader.

So if I can kindly ask the Dynon moderators to please moderate and if some posters get nasty to proactively give them a gentle nudge in the positive direction (on the public forum so as to set the "tone") and if the posters still treat this forum like some kind of political discussion forum with the un-funny snarky quips then please take whatever action is necessary to keep this space "positive", "helpful", and the kind of place that will reflect well of the Dynon experience

OR...the same "usual suspects" will continue to be snarky and condescending and nobody will post and nobody will answer and nobody will benefit...and that can't be good for Dynon and like the Chelton buyers discovered...it will be bad for us as well.

Thanks for your consideration and have a great weekend!!!

 

[sunfish]

Home built 101,  you misunderstand my post and worries about what is going on.

The clincher for me in buying Dynon Skyview Gear for my experimental build was this wonderful forum. Without this forum and Dynons wonderful customer Service to its members and the rest of the Dynon "community" as evidenced by the threads on this website which almost always end up with a problem fixed by Dynon or another user then Skyview is just another piece of consumer electronic junk. Hence my concern when Dynon seems to have "gone dark".

To put that another way, this forum is an irreplaceable part of the Skyview system itself.

To put that yet another way, I am going to be trusting my life to my instruments and I require them to be supported by a manufacturer who stands behind their products like Dynon has so far. Any suggestion that the wonderful quality of Dynon support might be compromised in any way will therefore see me replace them with something I can trust more -  a name brand.

To restate that, Dynon support has been so good that a "glitch" like the non appearance of documentation is way out of character for Dynon and. Therefore is very unsettling, at least to me.

I hope that explains it. No snark intended, just dismay.

 

[GalinHdz]

This forum is a SUPERB place for information and help. DYNON does a great job of keeping it on track. If you have a good idea, provide it as a suggestion but accept that DYNON can not implement all of them. I have to agree with others here that if SkyView doesn't do and DYNON doesn't implement what you want, you should find and use another system.

FWIW: If you are "thin skinned" you shouldn't be on any INTERNET forum.

 

[mrdaud]

Homebuilt101, I think the issue for me was when you attacked Dynon for not designing a dimmer circuit for you. It was obvious to me, as an expert in avionics (because Uncle Sam says so), and others, that you are not very knowledgable about electronics, or the services that Dynon should provide. You are not going to learn basic electronics from this forum! Several posters have suggested you get local or professional help for your panel, but you seem to just ignore that advice. There are many vendors that will build the entire panel for you. My biggest concern is that you are building something that is unsafe and will kill yourself or others, and that you don't seem to realize your limitations. It is obvious to me by your comments posted above, that you actively invite the "snarkiness" you mention. I myself have disagreed with a few posters on the forum, but have gone back to those same people for advice. If you don't want to hear opinions, good or bad, don't post on this forum. Again, go out and find some local electronics help for you panel build-out. As quoted by Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does".

 

[William_Ince]

This forum is a SUPERB place for information and help. DYNON does a great job of keeping it on track. If you have a good idea, provide it as a suggestion but accept that DYNON can not implement all of them. I have to agree with others here that if SkyView doesn't do and DYNON doesn't implement what you want, you should find and use another system.

Concur totally.

 

[Dynon101]

As they say... if you can't beat em... join em"

>I have to agree with others here that if SkyView doesn't do and DYNON doesn't implement what you want, you should find and use another system.

Dude... it's English 101...if you can't read then pay someone to read for you.

I never implied that Dynon was not implementing what I wanted... I was simply asking the other users on the forum if it could be done. You didn't read that... really?!?!?!

Then someone else who doesn't read takes that fake post and like a lemming jumps off the snark cliff and piles on.

Whoa... I got to tell ya... that business of trying to walk the high road of being positive and trying to encourage respectful communication really sucks... this descent into juvenile snark and nastiness is sooo much more fun. Really invigorating zapping out some curt zingers... didn't know what I was missing..

Dang... you boyz are like the fountain of youth... feels just like being in high school again. I would stand in amazement and watch the cool kidd verbally insult each other and wonder why they acted that way ... but now I know. This being a Delta Hotel on the internet is really cool!!!

Can't wait to dig into a big stack o pancakes with you all at the Dynon sponsored fly in breakfast... we can all sit around and insult each other... sure would encourage better attendance the next time around!?!?!?

Wow... This must be like Trump feels when he sits on the john at 2 AM and zaps out the nasty tweets. Who knew!?!?

Hey of course nobody is gonna be offended by this post because ya'all have thick skin and after all this is just the Internet... everyone expects this forum to be snarky and nasty because it is the internet and if you don't like it don't post.

Ain't Cyber Space wonderful... we can all be nasty... anonymously?!?!?

Betcha this post will promote more conversation than being nice does...

See... smiley face

Just sharing the cyber luv...

 

[GalinHdz]

Ain't Cyber Space wonderful... we can all be nasty... anonymously?!?!?

IMHO this is an interesting comment from somebody who is only identified as "Homebuilt101". :

 

[swatson999]

Ain't Cyber Space wonderful... we can all be nasty... anonymously?!?!? 

IMHO this is an interesting comment from somebody who is only identified as "Homebuilt101".  :

I, for one, hope we don't get into a discussion of on-line "handles" and identities and such. There are a LOT of weirdos on the Internet, and people can have very valid reasons for not wanting their true names (and thence, addresses, emails, phone numbers, etc.) constantly hanging out there on every post. On-line stalking and harassment (as well as real-world) is a threat, so let's please not start down the road of bashing people because they don't post their personal information with every forum post. And yes, I'm speaking from experience.

I even find the idea of the folks who photograph every plane and post the pictures on various sites along with information about where and when it was taken, the N-number, owner, address, etc., a bit on the creepy side.

Whether someone is posting using their own name or a username is irrelevant to the points they may be making.

 

[GalinHdz]

FWIW; his point was:

Ain't Cyber Space wonderful... we can all be nasty... anonymously?!?!?

Now I am going to get back to discussing SkyView and what it can/can't do.

 

[Dynon]

So it is super rare for us to moderate posts/threads here, even when the not-love is directed towards us (maybe even especially so). It's not a terribly philosophical position - it just hasn't been too necessary. Disagreements can get a touch snarky, but we try not to sanitize the converstaion unless it gets personal. It's been a rare occasions that we've locked a thread that's gone off the rails. I don't know that we've ever banned a user. We don't have a hard definition of where the line is - we try to exercise restraint and our best judgement, and we ask that you all do too.

That said, a few thoughts about our forum, its users, and our role:

This is primarily a community forum that we host. We love that our customers and enthusiasts come together to help each other.

We read every post. We respond to the majority of threads/topcs, but we don't respond to every one of them (I'd estimate our reponse rate at something like 70-80% per topic/thread. We try to be helpful when we do. We're unique in that the things we say become Dynon canon implicitly, and believe me - it's hard to answer here without accidentally promising something we didn't mean to, or talking about something that we're not ready to discuss, or saying "not yes" without dissapointing someone.

Because of the above, responses here tend to come from one of a few senior people here at Dynon (I'm Mike, our marketing director, but have a technical background and a knowledge resource for our support team. Some of our most technical posts come from Ian, our senior systems architect.)

Because our voice here is a bit outside of our technical support group, we try to be as helpful as possible here without providing deep individualized technical support. Once we're convinced there's something up with your system beyond a simple configurational issue, whether it's an actual product defect or perhaps an installation error, we want to get you personalized support (support at dynonavionics dot com or 425-402-0433). We have the ability to better track your issues (and trends) within our first tier technical support team.

Although we'll refer you to our technical support team to solve your particular system issues, we recognize this is a huge source of knowledge about Dynon products. So we DO try to explain technical things that we think many people might benefit from knowing, espeicially if it's something that doesn't quite belong in the documentation.

We tend to throttle the level of our technical responses to the expertise of the individual, and we try not to do too much in the way of custom circuit design or electrical system reviews here. When we do get deeply technical, we are usually addressing an area that will benefit a common configuration question, not a customized or unique application. What one group thinks is a great idea, another group will completely disagree with. We tend to stay out of these gray areas. We'll speak up if we really do think something is ill-advised or "wrong", but there are plenty of architectural decisions in the middle that we might not make ourselves, but you might, but we don't want to neccesarily weigh in on. A good example is backup electrical systems. One could argue that backup batteries on SkyView displays give you everything you NEED to land safey in the event of an electrical failure without making more general complexity throughout the electrical system. Other people prefer to have that backup capabliity exist outside of SkyView itself.

Many of the regular contributors here that aren't Dynon are "still here" because they like the community, like helping others, and enjoy the discussions. There's no community without them. Many of them have long finished their project. They tend to push back - occasionally, with a bit of sarcasm or snark - if the question being asked has been answered before (forum search is a pretty powerful tool), are more demanding than the norm in your expectations, or haven't deeply explored the documentation or system yourself to discover how something works. For what it's worth, if you're pre-install but have equipment, hooking everything up on the bench with a power supply or battery+charger is pretty straightforward for the core components in our system.

 

[William_Ince]

Dynon does a wonderful job.
The support I have received, on several occasions, has been nothing short of stellar.
Products and upgrades are awesome. I will be purchasing more in the near future.
Keep up the good work and please keep things competitive.

 

[jabarr]

+1