gyraf said:
Simple enough: What is your motivation for participating in discussions with and helping people that you've never met?
Back when I was a newbie at live sound mixing, I discovered a forum on CompuServe (!) which was very helpful. That forum eventually migrated to the WWW.
My participation in the forums was two-fold.
One, it's basically pay-it-forward. I had a lot of questions when I started out, and I thought that as I gained experience (as well as providing the perspective of someone who's an EE) I'd be able to help others.
The second is that, as JR says, we're social animals. As I started touring, I met IRL ("in real life," as they say) a lot of the folks with whom I'd been interacting on the forum. It certainly helps to have "met beforehand" a person who works for a band or a venue on day-of-show.
Oh, yeah, regarding that forum (it's now the ProSoundWeb Live Audio Board), at some point a couple of years ago, three things happened.
One, there seemed to be an increase in the number of clueless newbies whose posts were written in a way to make the person seem as if their knowledge was greater than it actually was. I was one of the old farts who were "present at the creation," and my role seemed to be as one of the guys who would "chief" the newbies. ("Chiefing" was a term used by the founder of the LAB, and basically it meant "schooling the dipshits so hard that they'd think twice about even posting on the forum." Yes, it was mean, but it was really "welcome to the Real World, kid," as the Butch Hancock song went.) And really, how many "what's the best kick drum mic?" threads are necessary? (Answer: identically ZERO.)
Two, the forum went through a weird gyration where they were moving over to a new forum server/software and the Powers That Be decided arbitrarily to shitcan the old threads. There was a lot of complaining and such about the moderation and the control of the forum (I was, and am, supportive of the board moderators, who I've met on gigs and such) and that overwhelmed the S/N of useful posts.
And third, we had a kid (he's almost 5 now) and I decided that I was way too old to work in a small rock club as a sound guy, so I gave it up (and I don't miss it). Now I just work for one band who are old friends and we do shows one weekend a month.
So at that point, I decided to step away from that forum, as well as a couple of others. Because I realized that I didn't care. I did get some emails from friends on the LAB (as well as from those who were part of a splinter forum) asking me to participate (mainly because someone probably needed chiefing), but I told them basically what I wrote above. They all understood complete.
-a