Dog Myths 03 - Trust internet users with high post count
We are always at pets forums and other related websites, reading and helping other people as we go along. Through our experience we found that the frequent users (forum user that has a lot of post accumulated past the years) have major impact on people with questions. This is because most people think that "hey this user has 10,000 post, he/she must have lots of experience in what they do".
One has to understand that a user who has thousands of post does not make him/her a dog expert, it only shows how active this person is in that particular online space, the solution does not always help and in some cases actually worsen problems. Why we define this as a myth is not to discourage people to read forums or to ignore posts of users, but because we have seen a lot of cases gone wrong due to online forums, we felt that people's concept need to change before more dogs suffer in the hands of online media. Some owners had already approached us knowing that something is wrong only months or years down the road when the problem is already in a severe condition, saying "because I read this in xxx forum and this person suggested this".
Do think through before you decide on the solution given, there are many people out there who wants to prove themselves knowledgable by participating in every single post/topics out there, they serve to increase their post count as well as define a position in that particular space, with the result of solutions that are either copied and paste out of any article they find on search engines, or worst, tips that they had "imagined". This will not only result in people following the wrong steps,'they might even hurt their dog with solutions that does not even exist! So once again, follow your conscience, not how many post this person has.
We are always at pets forums and other related websites, reading and helping other people as we go along. Through our experience we found that the frequent users (forum user that has a lot of post accumulated past the years) have major impact on people with questions. This is because most people think that "hey this user has 10,000 post, he/she must have lots of experience in what they do".
One has to understand that a user who has thousands of post does not make him/her a dog expert, it only shows how active this person is in that particular online space, the solution does not always help and in some cases actually worsen problems. Why we define this as a myth is not to discourage people to read forums or to ignore posts of users, but because we have seen a lot of cases gone wrong due to online forums, we felt that people's concept need to change before more dogs suffer in the hands of online media. Some owners had already approached us knowing that something is wrong only months or years down the road when the problem is already in a severe condition, saying "because I read this in xxx forum and this person suggested this".
Do think through before you decide on the solution given, there are many people out there who wants to prove themselves knowledgable by participating in every single post/topics out there, they serve to increase their post count as well as define a position in that particular space, with the result of solutions that are either copied and paste out of any article they find on search engines, or worst, tips that they had "imagined". This will not only result in people following the wrong steps,'they might even hurt their dog with solutions that does not even exist! So once again, follow your conscience, not how many post this person has.
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