[defaced thread] Affordable DMM Checkers: AC Reference...

[tatel]

As I see it, the OP had these references listed on ebay so if they didn't live up to expectations or meet specifications then purchasers had an avenue for reimbursement and negative feedback.

Regardless of other peoples views or opinions on the products, the OP was in fact a contributor to the forum which entitles them to post items in this B/S/W section, and if the items weren't fit for purpose then they wouldn't last here very long, that's for damn sure.

I don't know the reason for the ban and perhaps a timeout may have been sufficient but unfortunately the OP nominated to instigate what could be deemed a personal attack against another member by the (offensive?) thread title and that according to the rules won't be tolerated.

There's a sticker on this section about rules https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/buy-sell-wanted-rules/msg162055/#msg162055

Where it says (emphasis is mine):

Moderator Note: We seem to get many people sign up and only post stuff for sale. Often not even electronics related (and no PC hardware is not electronics related). This section is for the occasional sale of your personal stuff. If you have good reason to beleive that you need some leeway on this please contact us before posting a shower of posts as otherwise your posts will be removed and you will be banned without warning.

So, clearly, only occasional sale of personal stuff is allowed in this section. Maybe one could disagree with that rule, but to use this section, I think one has to agree with that or go elsewhere.

Moreover, I don't see anything allowing far over aggressive conduct against critics, etc, that as you say, have their own rules against on the entire forum.

I'm fine with that guy being banned. Everybody is free to disagree, but I have already said all I have to say.

Edit: to add quote to reference my reply

[tggzzz]

I really don't think so. The sort of people on here know how to make these simple things if they need one, but if they're that way inclined they will buy a cheaper and better looking one from AliBayzon. I mean, he showed that it's just some cheap parts on a perf board - anyone could do it.

What the people on here would be interested in is showing how superior they are by finding the tiniest fault, and loudly noting that you couldn't set a 20-digit meter from one so it must be shit. It's that community attitude that led to his attitude.

He seemed impervious to taking advice, but that's not an indictable offence. Often, one will get contradictory advice so if you follow one you'll be pissing off the supplier of the other, but why should he take any at all? In the end he has considered it all and decided that the way he will go is the way to go, and that should perfectly OK. It would be OK, except to those that think their advice is gold plated and simply must be followed.

In that thread it might be kind of OK to try and make him look a fool by asking about stuff that only applies to high-end super-expensive traceability (although using that as as a weapon surely sucks), but here in buy & sell it's just designed to stiff his sale. If you're actually interested in buying his kit then that sort of question is sensible, but the only ones asking here were those with a grudge intent on screwing any potential sale. I don't think that's on - if someone is happy to buy shit, it should be between them and the vendor.

Well, in fact this thread had been inactive for some days... so nobody compelled him to take any advice, and everyone put up with his bad manners ...and he was free to continue selling his things on eBay.

It should be realized that it was him who suddenly "closed" the thread, deleting his posts and stating he would open another thread -where it would have been free from any critics?

This thread wasn't his first thread on the subject, as Zucca noted above https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/fs-affordable-dmm-checkers-ac-reference-dc-reference-ohms-reference-etc/msg5465230/#msg5465230

The OP received plenty of similar comments from many people, so some might describe this thread as a "repeat offence"

Hell, no. These eBay listings were misleading and we all have a right to criticize that. If he wanted propaganda without criticism, it would have been better for him to pay for some ads somewhere.

I think, should that listing read something like:

"LT1236-10 5ppm 10V Reference."
"Final Trim to 10.0000 VDC @ 78F, 50% Humidity"
"Designed to affordably verify the function of Digital Multimeters up to 4.5 digits".

... there would have been much less critics

But at the end of the day, by making it clear that he does not accept criticism or else (temper tantrum), he was the one who made the ban inevitable

The current sqwarrel items omit some of the more unjustifiable claims omitted, e.g ultralow drift 5ppm. Good.

The text in one picture does mention "6000 count" meters, which is an improvement on "meters". That, as I noted in
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/fs-affordable-dmm-checkers-ac-reference-dc-reference-ohms-reference-etc/msg5465140/#msg5465140
means some criticisms don't arise. Good.

Apart from that, I agree with Muttley Snickers that nobody benefits from this kind of thread. Questions and refutations unnecessarily waste time.

I also agree with wraper that, while we can see through the claims, the people that buy the devices (as originally advertised) probably can't.

[Brumby]

My expectations were set by the user name.  I was not disappointed.

It seems to me that the OP had a nice little suite of items that might provide sanity checks on a lot of the common gear you would encounter.  If they had stayed in the eBay arena, I expect they could have likely operated with some success as those who would be inclined to accept the claims made were likely not in a position to understand the actual detail of those claims and would have no way of verifying them anyway.

Even I, who am by no means a metrologist's bootlace, saw the claims and price point and just shook my head and said "Nope".

Posting here to promote the products for sale indicated two things, to me.  The first is that they did not really understand the claims being made.  The second is that they did not realise that there are many members here that do.  The consequential challenge was inevitable and, IMHO, appropriate for the EEVBlog.

If they were expecting endorsement, then they really did not understand what they were talking about - in the true and full sense of the terms they used - and the EEVBlog is definitely NOT the place to try.  This, together with their extremely immature response had me thinking along the lines of Dunning–Kruger.



This whole matter has ended up exactly where I expected it to after just having read the first post.

Edit: Title changed to original

[pcprogrammer]

As I see it, the OP had these references listed on ebay so if they didn't live up to expectations or meet specifications then purchasers had an avenue for reimbursement and negative feedback.

Anyone who knows what their doing won't buy this to begin with. Those who don't, don't know better and don't have a clue or capability to verify performance.

How many of the members here do actually have the proper equipment to verify the performance of such a thing?

Even the meters tggzzz mentions in a post I can't seem to find anymore, might not be calibrated properly to do a real verification. A friend of mine who has an impressive set of measurement equipment is often on about them needing calibration, but it being expensive now he no longer has access to what was available at his workplace. That is the down side of retirement. 

[tggzzz]

Even the meters tggzzz mentions in a post I can't seem to find anymore, might not be calibrated properly to do a real verification.

They are all out of calibration, by varying numbers of years/decades. I am careful to note that when showing measurements made with them.

[coromonadalix]

Banned here but still active on Ebay  IE:  sqwarrel

[Gyro]

He isn't the first banned ebay voltage reference seller, at least his are reasonably cheap and probably reasonably soldered - unlike the other one! 

Edit: ( https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/calibratory-d-105-dc-precision-voltage-reference-standard/ ), still active.

[Kim Christensen]

If he had come here asking humbly “guys, I am a beginner who would like to build and sell these devices on Ebay, what do you think? How can I improve these while keeping a low cost?” He would likely have received plenty of useful advice. But his stubbornness to defend the indefensible, that is why he aggravated everyone.

He sort of did that back in January:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/a-few-cheap-ballpark-testers-i-sell

My expectations were set by the user name.  I was not disappointed.

Yea, that was definitely a red flag. 

[J-R]

Sad to see a nearly 10 year member drive a new member to such an emotional outburst leading to a ban.

It seems your approach needs an adjustment.  You provided your input at which point the OP made it clear they didn't want you to engage further, yet you essentially relentlessly continued.  You seem more like a bully than a contributor.

[Stray Electron]

Sad to see a nearly 10 year member drive a new member to such an emotional outburst leading to a ban.

It seems your approach needs an adjustment.  You provided your input at which point the OP made it clear they didn't want you to engage further, yet you essentially relentlessly continued.  You seem more like a bully than a contributor.

    I don't know which 10 year member you are attempting to blame this one but you can't blame this on just one person (other than perhaps the OP).  A lot of people (pretty much every reply) were skeptical of the OP's claims and asked questions and pointed out the OP's misleading statements.

   If the OP didn't want to engage further, then all he had to do was to ignore the thread. 

[J-R]

Sad to see a nearly 10 year member drive a new member to such an emotional outburst leading to a ban.

It seems your approach needs an adjustment.  You provided your input at which point the OP made it clear they didn't want you to engage further, yet you essentially relentlessly continued.  You seem more like a bully than a contributor.

    I don't know which 10 year member you are attempting to blame this one but you can't blame this on just one person (other than perhaps the OP).  A lot of people (pretty much every reply) were skeptical of the OP's claims and asked questions and pointed out the OP's misleading statements.

   If the OP didn't want to engage further, then all he had to do was to ignore the thread.

Sure, others chimed in but it 100% was tggzzz that got him going, as made blatantly obvious by the thread title.

The OP made this thread to sell their homemade product.  They already made multiple other threads and abandoned them only to have the same member follow to the new thread.

There is no reason to keep arguing with the OP.  You've made your point and anyone interested in the product can read the skeptical posts and make their own informed decisions.  The OP has their reasons for not considering various member inputs, of which I agree with most of them.

Going further is poor taste and just makes the forums seem toxic.

[DimitriP]

a nearly 10 year member

You seem to understand the reasoning behind the "relentlesness" , since you used the phrase "nearly 10 year",
instead of 10.00000  or worse, nearly 10.00000 

Regarding "toxicity" ....oxygen and water Good for human, bad for iron.
Sometimes what matters is not the environment, but the substance.

I'm almost 99.999% done composing my reply <<<<that's a wink

[coppercone2]

I think its OK because it still probobly good enough for most shit people run and its good enough to get rid of crap measurements. just don't use it for publishing data in a journal or ISO certified place

[T3sl4co1l]

Sad to see a nearly 10 year member drive a new member to such an emotional outburst leading to a ban.

It seems your approach needs an adjustment.  You provided your input at which point the OP made it clear they didn't want you to engage further, yet you essentially relentlessly continued.  You seem more like a bully than a contributor.

    I don't know which 10 year member you are attempting to blame this one but you can't blame this on just one person (other than perhaps the OP).  A lot of people (pretty much every reply) were skeptical of the OP's claims and asked questions and pointed out the OP's misleading statements.

   If the OP didn't want to engage further, then all he had to do was to ignore the thread.

There is a difference between tactful critiqueing and, well, what we had here.

Let alone simply inquiring for further information -- perhaps they have those data and just neglected to provide it.  Admittedly a remote possibility, but one that must be tried before dogpiling on.

And once one rudeness has been perceived, the sharks circle, things only get worse, and the battle for civility has been lost.  The very first replies have a moral duty to be polite, for they set the tone for the rest of the thread.

I suspect there's a lot of undiagnosed and unrealized ASD, I mean in electronics in general for one, but more particularly among members here.  It is necessary to present facts (or point out the lack thereof), yes -- but it is not sufficient to do only that, especially when doing so with a tone of voice that reads somewhere between frank and condescending.

I don't say this just to chide, or lecture.  I say this from personal experience, and I'm sure a lot of people here are even more keenly aware of it than I am... It's something I've practiced all my life, to varying degrees of success, as I notice even from posts just a few years old, on the occasion I happen across them.  It's a skill that can be forever improved, and is particularly difficult to master as few if any people are interested or willing to critique ones' interactions (aren't you supposed to figure that out in grade school? what could be more basic? ah, but what indeed).

Tim

[J-R]

"Autism is not an excuse to bully people."  Louis Rossman

[KungFuJosh]

I have nothing against the OP or his products, but he absolutely overreacted and that started the downward spiral more than anything else.

That's on top of the fact that, as pointed out, this thread and him spamming other threads with sales links to his products was all against the rules.

I'm looking at ref projects, searching different threads, and OP posted links to his toys. 🤷

[J-R]

I agree with the decision to ban the OP due to his outburst and possibly the (too) many posts pushing his products.  (Is it just temporary to give him time to cool off?)

But also with less than 100 total posts I don't see how dodging him is ruining your daily quality time with the EEVblog!

Even I admit that if I were to sell a similar product I would not be 100% sure in which forum to post about it.  Would he need to buy ad space from Dave?  Or perhaps "Sponsor" a board?

Well, regardless, I think this "postmortem" is nearly complete...

[dietert1]

For me all this is an example for the difficulties in human communication. We always think we understand the other person, but we don't. Everybody has his own sense of humor.
We have some super contributors here who have never been decent starting from their first posts and it only got worse with their mounting number of posts. Quantity doesn't mean quality. Maybe there should be a rule that contributors with more than 10 000 posts or more than 5 posts per day should not disturb forum beginners without first looking into his/her profile and understanding a little what is going on.
By the way, the OP posted about his offers in the Buy/Sell/Wanted section. In general people not interested in the offers don't comment, at least there won't be an engineering discussion.

Regards, Dieter

[pcprogrammer]

For me all this is an example for the difficulties in human communication. We always think we understand the other person, but we don't. Everybody has his own sense of humor.

Certainly true, and that also means that it is not always understood that something is intended to be humor.

We have some super contributors here who have never been decent starting from their first posts and it only got worse with their mounting number of posts. Quantity doesn't mean quality.

I agree with the "Quantity doesn't mean quality", since I stated that before during the "TEA war",  but for what I have seen I can't think of a super contributor that reacts indecent all the time

Maybe there should be a rule that contributors with more than 10 000 posts or more than 5 posts per day should not disturb forum beginners without first looking into his/her profile and understanding a little what is going on.

There is kind of a rule, where Dave states to be nice to beginners, but that requires a definition of beginner. A newbie on the forum is not necessarily a beginner, and the OP seems to not fall in the category when making "precision calibrating equipment".

By the way, the OP posted about his offers in the Buy/Sell/Wanted section. In general people not interested in the offers don't comment, at least there won't be an engineering discussion.

Why not. It can be seen as feedback after purchase, and inform other potential buyers about the quality of the product.

[dietert1]

..
Why not. It can be seen as feedback after purchase, and inform other potential buyers about the quality of the product.

As far as i understand there had been a previous discussion in the metrology section, but the "experts" did not care. Probably none of them purchased any of the offers.

Regards, Dieter

[alm]

As far as i understand there had been a previous discussion in the metrology section, but the "experts" did not care.

After giving them guidance on how to come up with more meaningful specs and them not showing any interest, I stopped caring indeed. I don't think we're losing out on any meaningful technical discussion by them being banned.

[shapirus]

I have nothing against the OP or his products, but he absolutely overreacted and that started the downward spiral more than anything else.

I think we observed a perfect example of what's called synergistic effect.

Or a well-matched resonant circuit, if you wish.

[tggzzz]

"Autism is not an excuse to bully people."  Louis Rossman

Neither is it an excuse for the OP to write things like...

an island off the coast of a real continent, which island is known to be populated by many of corrupt morals, conversational hyperbole, achievemental dysfunction and an affinity for inbred and, in several cases, immoral so-called "royalty" admiration syndrome.

Due to a wholesale "rewriting of history", the only place that can still be found is https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/affordable-useful-ac-dc-references/msg5451386/#msg5451386 The OP did have the grace to admit his mistake; good.

A reasonable question is why, if the OP believes he has acted correctly, has he deleted many of his posts. Presumably he is embarrassed by them and no longer wishes to be associated with what he wrote.

Why was the OP banned, rather than other people being banned? For clarity, I don't know why he was banned - although I can make guesses as easily as anybody else. Note that members having large numbers of posts have been banned in the past, so that can't be part of the decision.

[pcprogrammer]

I found his insight here amusing though. Called for not so much.

I have this mental image of tggzzz sitting in his week-old undies and moth-eaten robe, in the corner of his tiny, gloomy, cold-water flat, in a poverty-stricken slum section of Birmingham, pecking away at his twenty-year-old Pentium computer while desperately searching forums and threads for topics wherein he can spew out his unwelcome drivel and negativity and display his legendary (in his own mind) philosophical and technical superiority as compared to the woefully ignorant and uninformed commoners who participate in these threads looking for useful suggestions from fellow members, as he, the self-ordained master of thread imposition, reflects within himself how utterly failed as a human being he is, as he seeks out these thread-killing opportunities so as to feel somewhat compensated for his lifelong worthlessness and complete failure to achieve anything noteworthy or meaningful.

What he missed is:

Keeping him self warm with the space heaters the old vacuum tube based analog scopes are. 

But this shows he was capable of providing somewhat civil feedback without using swear words. Flattering not so much of course, but we have seen far worse insults being made, and on the internet you have to deal with it unfortunately.

As to the quote

an island off the coast of a real continent, which island is known to be populated by many of corrupt morals, conversational hyperbole, achievemental dysfunction and an affinity for inbred and, in several cases, immoral so-called "royalty" admiration syndrome.

It looks like a lot of American people seem to forget where their roots lie. 

[tggzzz]

I found his insight here amusing though. Called for not so much.

I have this mental image of tggzzz sitting in his week-old undies and moth-eaten robe, in the corner of his tiny, gloomy, cold-water flat, in a poverty-stricken slum section of Birmingham, pecking away at his twenty-year-old Pentium computer while desperately searching forums and threads for topics wherein he can spew out his unwelcome drivel and negativity and display his legendary (in his own mind) philosophical and technical superiority as compared to the woefully ignorant and uninformed commoners who participate in these threads looking for useful suggestions from fellow members, as he, the self-ordained master of thread imposition, reflects within himself how utterly failed as a human being he is, as he seeks out these thread-killing opportunities so as to feel somewhat compensated for his lifelong worthlessness and complete failure to achieve anything noteworthy or meaningful.

I'd forgotten that; life's too short to keep grudges. Much easier (and better) to concentrate only on what people say.

Not a bad insult, I'll agree. Not relevant, nor accurate, but that's a different point!

What he missed is:

Keeping him self warm with the space heaters the old vacuum tube based analog scopes are. 

How dare you! 

I have a maximum of one tube per scope, and some of those are were DSOs. In general I refuse to have anything I can't easily lift with one arm. (Exception: affordable portable 21GHz spectrum analysers aren't easy to lift)

The only tubes I have are inside a couple of amusing instruments, are ceramic, and smaller than my thumbtip. I will admit to owning some dekatrons and neons and panaplex displays. No heaters in those, though!

As to the quote

It looks like a lot of American people seem to forget where their roots lie. 

So do people this side of the pond "People are people, the whole world over".