What do we as a community need to do to encourage proper research before buying an animal? This just seems to be absolutely essential to me.
I also wonder what the best response for us is to a situation where this clearly did not happen but the beginner is willing to learn?
This type of response to beginner threads seems all to common and follow the same pattern:
1. New member/beginner posts with a question/concern
2. It becomes very apparent very quickly to those with experience that beginner has little knowledge and probably did little research.
3. Advice is offered and questions are asked of beginner about research and tank parameters/etc.
4. Beginner responds in uneducated manner due to lack of experience/research
5. Posting continues but limited results are shown from previous advice
6. Members jump in to complain about beginner's lack of knowledge and ignorance of advice (of course, I wish all would be able to read advice, take the best, apply it, and solve the problem; too often it overwhelms a beginner to the point of leaving or ignoring many posts instead of reading through them)
7. The thread spirals into an overflow of activity with very little useful help until moderators step in to control posts and the thread ultimately is locked
It seems obvious to me that many new members that are complete beginners and have not done enough prior research tend to respond upon their ignorance without knowing best information to share or proper forum etiquette (i.e. avoiding multiple short posts, answering all questions as best as possible in polite manner). Once the lack of forum and reef experience becomes evident, the tone from other members turns too direct, blunt, even hostile. Though this may seem necessary at times, it is likely to always be misinterpreted by a new member and upset the whole thread.
It also seems obvious to me that, in this particular case, Jordan was ill-informed before acquiring the shark and the best advice was for returning/rehoming the shark as soon as possible while also maintaining its health as best as possible. Focusing attention to these points rather than focusing attention on the prior mistakes will likely bring a better result (I know there is some cross-over here, for example: lack of live rock or other biomedia caused lack of cycle which caused problems that need to be addressed; the simplest solution would be to have bio-active live rock or other media ready to immediately install [...which emphasizes the point that basic research would have indicated it should have been installed previously...]). Instead of pointing out what should have been done, we should advise to what can be done to best remedy the situation. Whatever ways are possible, we should be careful not to allow our patience to wear thin too soon when dealing with a new member, even if it is frustrating. In this particular case, there did not seem to be a lot of indication that the advice was being ignored, more that the solution could not be achieved fast enough... This seems different to me than some cases where advice is blatantly ignored and decisions are made against the advice.
I don't know, this is just such an odd circumstance to find a perfect answer. I wish we could somehow always provide the best chances for a new member to succeed, but this cannot happen without research by the new member (...and always best well before acquiring the animal). I am glad that my personal introduction to the reefing world was only with an existing FOWLR from a coworker that was stable enough to maintain while my drive to research and improve increased. Instead of acquiring animals, I acquired books and spent hours reading those books as well as hours spent in online research. I wish all people did the same, but I know this is not and never will be the case. Most people probably find this forum after starting into the hobby rather than before, which limits the impact we can have on helping avoid purchase before research.
What exactly is
#reefsquad /
@ReefSquad for on this site? Is there any way to have a list of resident experts for different matters for quick referral for new members? It would be nice if we could direct questions we cannot answer directly to someone in the community that has reliable support/feedback of his/her level of knowledge in certain areas. Again, I know perfection is unattainable, but this might be a great help. I've learned of a few members through time on the forum that seem to be considered resident experts, but I am not aware of any system of experts on this site. Maybe it exists and I am not aware? Are there staff positions that cover these areas? I picture some system where resident experts are either assigned into staff positions or feedback/voting systems allow the members to ascribe support of a resident expert beyond just total posts and likes.
