Mark,
Thanks for a grounding, down to earth post.
We have grown considerably, and with that growth comes a lot of repetition, and a certain amount of snarky-ness due to the years of constantly rehashing the same old topics. Unfortunately not everyone who has stepped through the doors comes here for the same reason, so it's difficult to assess the true intensions of the poster. When questions are posted in a highly vague manner, or presented in way that starts off pointing the finger at the equipment, you have to expect a fair amount of snark. People generally are looking for a shortcut, and realistically speaking, 90% of the shooters out there are no where near as good as they think they are. So people tend to dismiss these questions, especially when the posters hints at the knowledge that it is "probably them". Simply reversing the question, saying How do I adjust "me" first and is there something else I can do to the rifle to help, is much different than saying, the rifle is jacked and messing with me.
The trend in shooting is to "buy" a shortcut, they want to first purchase success and work on their personal flaws later. (If they are even willing to admit they have any) I get that, it's the nature of the business. So when it "appears" and I say that knowing nothing about the guy on the other side of the screen, they are looking to blame equipment. We tend to turn off.
Being perfectly frank, if i was at a range seeing someone like you described, I would do everything to avoid them. So when you say, how would you treat that person on the range, the answer is, not at all... I would avoid that person and why I use a private range. It could be something as simple as a basic mumbling under their breath, to a boisterous rant about the PRS stock messing up their shooting. That would be my queue to leave. In a classroom situation it's a different story, when people actively seek instruction and are serious about it you know. Well then, sure you do everything you can to assess the problem and fix it. But face to face is a completely different animal than the internet. You see we can't see what the shooter sees, and we can't answer that type of question without a certain amount of detail. When that detail lacks, snark replaces what we don't have.
Being in the military as you are, I was, many of us have, you also have to expect a certain amount of humor. Some harmless ribbing. How you handle that jackassing says a lot about who we are dealing with on the other side of the screen. Do you get mad and storm off, or do you say, "ya maybe that isn't worded right, try this"... That is part of the process, we have very limited tools, while it may not be the best method, it's the one people tend to fall back on. It's the internet after all and still 75% entertainment if not 95%. This is a shooting site, feelings are not being coddled here. If you go back to our classes, I am sure the day had it fair share of horsing around. Certainly there were jokes putting someone down. We all laugh and get to work. Ya, you got me, next. We're both pretty short, that alone was endless hours of fun for everyone. If it bothered you, you never would have moved forward.
Do we jump the gun, isolate people looking for real answers, yes we do. It's also the nature of the business. And because the internet moves so fast we tend to forget it all by the next cup of coffee and move on to the next guy asking the next same old question. Some days we answer them to the best of our ability, some days we are looking to entertain ourselves and blow them off. Other days we are pissed off at the wife and take it out on the first dumb post we see. It's no different than real life... but get this, we don't know the person asking so it's not personal. Flipping the conversation is pretty easy, and more than once a day a guy will start off on one side of the coin and wind up on the other. But that is a two way street. You have to be willing to look beyond the text to what it is we might be keying on. Otherwise, every one gets riled, and a shit storm starts pissing in everyone's Cheerios.
Despite everything there are some solid answers here, the details are limited so the answer are very vague. But there are still answers here. You can focus on the snark, or choose to see it in a different way.
Yes, it's grown big here, 92,000+ registered, and 12 years of traffic... is it worth it. Absolutely. I tell people all the time, only 10% of this site is worth a damn, but with 2.7 Million posts, and that is not counting what was pruned, changed, deleted forever, that is a still a lot of really solid information. We move 4.5 Terabytes of data every month on here... 10% of that is a great transfer of knowledge.
