Quote:
Originally Posted by AmelEP
That's a bit odd, according to the poll, majority of the people have only one snake but from a lot of the posts I've seen so far indicate that most of y'all have tons.
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Just an off-hand guess, but here's my hypothosis on that:
People that have lots of snakes are more likely to post on the forum, since they want to share their revelations and are more likely to need to ask questions - as they have multiple snakes, there are more things to go wrong, and more chances for things to go wrong.
In addition to this, people with many snakes are more likely to have a shop or be breeders, or active community people (work in the industry, write books, etc) and participate in the community to keep on the cutting edge of developments, which is important for any business or entrepreneur.
People with one snake are more likely to be first-time owners, inexperianced people (newbies or noobies, and yes there is a difference), and that sort of thing. With only one snake there are less things to go wrong, and a lot of people who buy snakes do so in the same way as they would buy a rabbit or cat - it seemed like a good idea at the time. They don't have the knowledge there, and don't nessecerily care if something goes wrong. Either way, they are less likely to post on the forum.
Therefore, the people voting 1 snake are probably those who have little participation or interest in the forums, and those people probably do make up the majority of the snake-owning community (I wouldn't say herpers, because many of these people.. well, aren't). They vote on the poll because voting is easy to do and makes people feel like they have an influence, or say on the forum.
The people who post most are probably those with multiple snakes who have an active interest in the community, and although they make up the majority of posts and information-giving, probably don't make up the VAST majority of the industry or even forum
Disclaimer: My views in no way suggest that those with only one snake are inexperianced or don't care about their snakes - the majority of people on this forum certainly know what they are doing, or at least are interested to learn, hence why they are here. I am just generalising that the majority of those who buy one snake from a pet shop, are doing so as a generic pet and not as a herper. That does not mean
YOU (whoever is reading this post), I'm just talking generally.
Also - there are newbies and noobies (some people term them differently, this is just my term for them). Newbies are fine - people who, whilst new to an area and probably don't know much about it, are willing to learn and expand their knowledge.
These people are just at the beginning of a long road to possible success. A few years back, a guy joined an overclocking forum that I am part of, and I was advising him the very basics of computers like putting them together and basic BIOS modification. Three years later and he now runs his OWN overclocking and hardware review site. He was a newbie
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Noobs (noobies) are.. people who dive into a topic area with no knowledge of it, and no real interest to learn anything, they just want to get their name up in lights, and often to acchieve whatever they want to, as fast as they can without learning anything along the way.
As a good analogy, we have a lot of people come of the forum with messages like "OMG doodz, how can i 0vercloxxors this new proc, 3GHz wanna get it to 6ghz ASAP, no volt mods too difficult". They are noobs - they have no interest in learning, and will probably give up in a few weeks or months. I guess in the pet-keeping world, these are the "lads" who go out and buy a puppy because it seems "cool", don't know how to look after it, feed it all the wrong things, and then abandon it in a field in 3 months because they got bored of it.
Obviously we know simply by the fact that you are all on a forum related to Herpetology, posting or even just reading questions and answers that you are either experianced people or "newbies", so what I'm trying to say it, don't take offence to my predictions
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As an aside, wow! This thread is 4 years old and still going, with only 7 pages? And the poll is not even related to the topic question. Why doesn't someone just lock this thread and open up a new poll asking "How many snakes do you own?"? It would generate more forum interest. Although... 10,000 views is a lot of forum interest O_o;.