Help i know very little

[snowcat]

btw
as far as i know there are no beginner picks (we all have to do it w the same things )
ok there are special tools but start using normal picks and tension so you learn how a lock works

[WhiskeyTango]

for crying out loud romstar, if you dont want to be bothered by "newbes"
dont respond to thier frigin posts already.sure hes asking questions that ALL OF US HAVE ASKED AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER but that isnt a good enough reason to make him feel like a dumb ass.sorry joe im acting like your one of my troops.try south ord they are reasonably priced and so long as your not deviantly investigating lockpicking you dont have to worry about the paper trail anyway.becides i heard that the fbi set this forum up to spy on us "theifs" hahaha.back to the point,everyone says dont spend too much moneyon your first kit but they didnt earn your money ither, so spend as much as you want but reailze you only really need the baisic small set to get started
wt

[Romstar]

Whiskey,

Yes, that is good advice. No I am not bothered by newbies. But, come on, please.

Right at the top of the forums list: Lockpicking 101 - FAQs, and General Information.

Click on that, and right at the top here you find a wonderful starter list. You don't even have to search. Simply spend fifteen minutes reading a bit, and every question he asked gets answered.

That's all I ask of anyone. We've pretty much given everyone the manual, it's the understanding of it that we're trying to clarify.

You're right, we all asked those questions once upon a time. When I first asked them, I had a few people who knew some of this stuff, and I spent a lot of money on books. Some good, some really bad.

I can't imagine it getting much easier than this unless we form an international club with volunteers that will go to each newbie's home and actually teach them.

I just want people to do a bit of reading. Just spend an obligatory 15 - 30 minutes reading and we wouldn't have nearly as many of these questions as we have had recently.

If after that, you don't understand, I am so happy to help it isn't funny. Look at some of my contributions here. I make every effort to make them as understandable as possible. That is WHY they are as long as they are.

If I didn't want to help and I didn't care, I wouldn't spend the time doing this day after day. I like this place. Not only is it slightly addictive, but I like being able to help newcomers avoid the pitfalls I had to go through.

I do this BECAUSE I care.
Romstar

[Mad Mick]

FFS Whiskey, there are a multitude of questions that can be answered by simply looking through the FAQ's. The general noob 'modus operandi' is to skip the FAQ's and ask questions which have been answered in multitudinous proportions by the regular users, countless times and in duplicate, even triplicate.

Once you have been here for a while, you easily get tired of wading through, and answering these posts and simply direct the poster to SEARCH.

Give it time and you'll be doing the same....or not even be replying.

[Mad Mick]

Guess Rom got in there beforehand.

[Murph]

Base on my experience with this forum, you have to take the time to do searches and READ. I feel you can learn more that way, and develop a good personal "library" of information. I do research for a living, so I'm used to it.

I understand how people (moderators and users alike) feel.

[S3rratedSp00L]

Since this is related to searching and could affect some n0obs as well:

Is anyone else having problems with search not working!? I have been doing what I like to call "manual searching" since shortly after I joined a while back because no matter what I search for it always turns up with no results whatsoever!? I have been assuming that it is my browser settings or something, but I just decided to turn everything on and try again.. Same thing... no results... I did a search for "picks" which I feel should have turned up something, right?

So if nobody else is having that problem, I think I will download a new browser or try a unix box since it almost never crashes ...

Either way, having problems with search is no excuse. I still manually look through the topics and browse anything that interests me at the moment. Most of the newbie questions are answered just fine in the FAQs and I read them over every now and then just in case.

My old job involved putting machines together, tech support for them, and running the network for several hundred machines.. The last thing I like to do is install software, so I find it easier just to read through the topics.. I would much rather search though, so I am gonna get up off my lazy @Ss and try some new browsers. I am still curious to know whether or not anyone else is having this problem!?

I used to get MySQL errors every now and then, so there may have been a problem there. Maybe someday I will install a copy of PHPbb/MySQL/Apache on a unix box and see how it all fits together.. could be interesting, but I woudl rather just mess with locks at the moment...

[mcm757207]

Since this is related to searching and could affect some n0obs as well:

Is anyone else having problems with search not working!? I have been doing what I like to call "manual searching" since shortly after I joined a while back because no matter what I search for it always turns up with no results whatsoever!? I have been assuming that it is my browser settings or something, but I just decided to turn everything on and try again.. Same thing... no results... I did a search for "picks" which I feel should have turned up something, right?

So if nobody else is having that problem, I think I will download a new browser or try a unix box since it almost never crashes ...

Either way, having problems with search is no excuse. I still manually look through the topics and browse anything that interests me at the moment. Most of the newbie questions are answered just fine in the FAQs and I read them over every now and then just in case.

My old job involved putting machines together, tech support for them, and running the network for several hundred machines.. The last thing I like to do is install software, so I find it easier just to read through the topics.. I would much rather search though, so I am gonna get up off my lazy @Ss and try some new browsers. I am still curious to know whether or not anyone else is having this problem!?

I used to get MySQL errors every now and then, so there may have been a problem there. Maybe someday I will install a copy of PHPbb/MySQL/Apache on a unix box and see how it all fits together.. could be interesting, but I woudl rather just mess with locks at the moment...

I haven't been searching at all lately, but I tried searching just for the sake of science after reading your post (i searched for "lock") and it returned no results. No threads about locks on a lockpicking forum.... for some reason I doubt that.

[randmguy]

Now this is odd...I just did a search for "SFIC" and got 43 hits. Yeah, we did have a problem several weeks ago with the search button and the "posts since last visit" buttons returning a debug error but that problem was fixed long ago.

[WhiteHat]

that's really bizarre.....

I also searched for "lock" and "pick" and "lock pick" nothing, nada, zippo....

take this search engine:

Lock

[G.I. Joe]

ok thx

[S3rratedSp00L]

ok, so some people other than me are experiencing the same thing, and some aren't!? This has me very curious! I tried "pick" "Pick", "Picks", "picking", and "lock".... Still nothing. This has me stumped.. I tried from several computers here and same result. I am on cable behind a FreeBSD box running NAT and Ipfilter (Which should make no difference)

Maybe I will get out my laptop, iPAQ, and wireless cards and see what happens from one of the local free wireless access points..

I certainly doubt my ISP would filter anything out, although I have heard some interesting stories from a comcast employee that I know.

I'm gonna try searching again...

[maldotcom2]

isn't most of that already in the FAQ's?

Yes, i believe it is, but i think the idea is that newbies just sign up, dont read anything, and go directly to making their first post of "how do i pick?"

A good system would be something that automatically throws the prompt of "searching" at them as soon as they sign up.

[alias]

Why not restrict any user with less than 'x' number of posts from starting new threads?

If you combine it with an idea like Mal's, you could have a page come up when the restricted user attempts to make a new thread which points them to the FAQ, the Search button and the 'Introduce' yourself thread. This'd surely do something to reduce the number of 'crap' or duplicate threads. You'd obviously have to set the 'x' pretty low so you don't end up with people just posting 'follow-up crap' in order to make 'x' posts so they can start a new thread and/or steering existing threads away from the original discussion but its a thought?

The other idea I've seen popping up is the idea of having threads for specific lock types. Maybe we could have more stickies with the popular 'newbie' locks like Master #3 and #140. That being said, people are just as likely to ignore the stickies as they do the FAQs so maybe we just have to live with it...

[mcm757207]

Or better yet, how about after someone signs up they are presented with a test with basic questions about locks just to show that they have read through the MIT guide and other faqs, forcing them to answer their own n00b questions. Questions such as:
How many tools are needed to pick a pin and tumbler lock?
Which of the following sets are good starter sets (then list sets such as:)
-PXS-14
-MPXS-64
-MPXS-32 etc. (the first being the correct answer)

and just basic questions like that... just my $0.02