Lucidd
Arachnoknight
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2013
- Messages
- 237
I read through this thread as I was pretty sure I recognized the spiders, due to owning a few grass spiders. I see the mystery has been solved so I have no contributions there, though I wanted to add my perspective on the issues of identifying spiders in a thread, because I see it in two ways.
I came to this forum because I was interested in learning from others, and like to help when I can, though I often don't because I know my own ignorance, haha. I noticed sometimes when I came to the forum thinking I had an idea of what a spider might be, someone would surprise me with something I had never heard of before. Let's not forget there's quite an (expanding) variety of spiders out there. It is possible someone might misidentify a spider on an "extreme" level because the only families/species they know to research aren't visually close enough to the actual spider, but still the closest they know. If the same person went on to argue that the correct ID was wrong, it might show they did not bother to research it before responding, then I might be a little more startled by their response. But otherwise, I wouldn't want to discourage people from contributing by attacking their perspective, because I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the position of wanting to help with the misfortune of lacking expertise, (and not lacking value as a contribution in itself).
On the other hand, I can understand it is probably frustrating to intimately know a species (or many), and see someone confuse it with something that does not make any sense to you. I fall victim to this frustration not with spiders, but in other aspects of my life. I'm sure these are frustrations most people can identify with in varying aspects of their lives. I think the reactions that come from these frustrations are typically best left in private if negative, because venting them out on a person doesn't seem to yield the most productive results. If I felt a need to respond to someone who was misinformed, I might convert that energy that comes from frustration into something positive by educating the person as to why why their conclusion may be a little misled, but that's me and I like to keep things pretty peaceful.
Just thought some observations may help, I don't really have a problem with anyone here.
I came to this forum because I was interested in learning from others, and like to help when I can, though I often don't because I know my own ignorance, haha. I noticed sometimes when I came to the forum thinking I had an idea of what a spider might be, someone would surprise me with something I had never heard of before. Let's not forget there's quite an (expanding) variety of spiders out there. It is possible someone might misidentify a spider on an "extreme" level because the only families/species they know to research aren't visually close enough to the actual spider, but still the closest they know. If the same person went on to argue that the correct ID was wrong, it might show they did not bother to research it before responding, then I might be a little more startled by their response. But otherwise, I wouldn't want to discourage people from contributing by attacking their perspective, because I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the position of wanting to help with the misfortune of lacking expertise, (and not lacking value as a contribution in itself).
On the other hand, I can understand it is probably frustrating to intimately know a species (or many), and see someone confuse it with something that does not make any sense to you. I fall victim to this frustration not with spiders, but in other aspects of my life. I'm sure these are frustrations most people can identify with in varying aspects of their lives. I think the reactions that come from these frustrations are typically best left in private if negative, because venting them out on a person doesn't seem to yield the most productive results. If I felt a need to respond to someone who was misinformed, I might convert that energy that comes from frustration into something positive by educating the person as to why why their conclusion may be a little misled, but that's me and I like to keep things pretty peaceful.
Just thought some observations may help, I don't really have a problem with anyone here.
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