Reliable Sources?

What is your guys take on the members here citing reliable sources for their information? Some do and some dont, however there are those members that do know what they are talking about and have proven it over and over again such as Bellgamin.

My take is if you are going to cite something as fact and cant provide the info or stats or what ever to back it up your no longer a reliable source.

 

[OT]
What does mean this OLD thing?

[/OT]

 

Ha ok, thanks, I was wondering why everybody was being that old around here!

 

I think forums are supposed to be for people 'that don't know what they are talking about' so people that know 'what they are talking about' can enlighten the ignorant and less technical humans so that next time they will know what they are talking about.

 

I agree. My question is more geared towards opinions on including sources. I mean I can go ahead an say this product here is the best on the market and just be blowing smoke with nothing backing it up. Do you agree claims like that should have proof? If they dont have proof would you pay less attention to those and hold whoever it was as less reliable?

 

The problem is what exactly defines reliability? Sources, proof, etc gives a degree of advantage but isn't necessarily applicable/agreeable to the other parties at all times...

I personally think that most members here have enough maturity and/or experience to be able to differentiate between an opinion, a statement and a fact for himself/herself.

 

safeguy is right... most of us here formulate opinions as to who is full of you-know-what and who isn't.

Funny thing about facts and verification, and people who insist on proof, is that an awful lot of valuable and accurate information can be wrongfully overlooked, or even possibly discredited, by the lack of proof.

Take for example a car approaching a stop sign at an intersection. You are watching. The car fails to obey the sign and continues through the intersection without stopping. There is no doubt about what you saw. But can you prove it? I don't think so, unless you were filming. Is it therefore correct for someone to discredit your account of what happened because you can't prove it? Is your account of what happened less factual because proof does not exist?

Many things must be taken into consideration when trying to decide what is accurate and what is not. An individual who insists that there must be "proof" in order for something to have credibility is going to miss out on lots of valid info.

 

I guess most people here talk about personal experience (That includes myself), that might not be the most accurate thing around, but it's what happened to us and that i would say is reliable source.
An example, is me!!
I never try to take down others opinions but i always try to give my honest opinion about a product after trying it.

Customer experience is very very important!
Also some people get over picky with "Proof"

 

Thats hearsay which is exactly the point.

 

In the malware world, very difficult to add weight to an argument, or add proof with so many variables.

Being:
- malware continually changing, populating, updating
- people have different setups, systems, hardware
- different levels of understanding, eg. understanding a program, configurations, reading alerts (what's easy to use for one, is difficult for another)
- people are from different countries, meaning, what security product works for one, might no be as effective for another in a different country

and so on.

Personal experience does count for a lot if that person has taken the time to test or give something a chance. Not just, install program for one hour, comment 'was slow', uninstall = cr@p product. Program might have had some conflicts, doesn't mean it's a bad program for everyone. But at the same time, ask yourself, should the user of had a smooth experience with the program, even if testing for one hour? All depends on what you deem as important.

Understanding which words/posts/users to learn from is the key. Don't think everything has to be based on expert reviews.

 

There also seems to be a lot of "follow the crowd" opinions about certain products. Product X will be bashed if it happens to be de rigueur that month; personal testing and opinions seem to be taking a backseat.

 

True, but that's how everything works
Hahahaha

We will never achieve 100% proof, tested, reliable source
We are not testing labs . . . more like kids in the playground hahahaha, WildersSecurity being our Sandbox

 

indeed my good friend

 

While this may occur, it definitely is not happening across a wide spectrum of Wilders members. At least that has been what I have observed in my time here.

 

And this Sanbox is better than all other sandboxes combined

 

Despite this being OT, I'll just mention I get an 'Unread' tooltip in Firefox.

On topic: as someone else has said, I think a lot of it is down to one's own experiences, and often in this medium at least, such anecdotes are difficult to prove, but one would hope to be able to take them in good faith.

What works for one may not work for another for a myriad of reasons, especially when it comes to computers. Time and again, we see users complain about product X failing for whatever reason, and yet others don't appear to have the same issues. That, unfortunately, appears to be the nature of the beast when it comes to the complexities of the various setups each and every one of us has.

I often wonder if it would at all be possible to find the common denominator amongst the people who have problems to find out why they have the issues others don't have with the same software et al. Probably hard to achieve given the complexities already mentioned.

 

Anyone gaining an education from the "school of hard knocks" is most likely very willing to share such things, because they wished someone would have shared it with them to begin with.

While you may have managed an "A" average while attending the "school of hard knocks", and graduated with a certain viewpoint, I might have only managed a "D" average, and graduated with a radically different viewpoint.

It is hard to say the "A" or the "D" is right or wrong. It depends entirely upon whether the situations (which entails quite a bit) are similar or not.

Sul.

 

One word: curiosity

Curiosity leading to clicking that prompt when you know you should not.

Curiosity as to how and why that happened, leading to understanding and avoidance in the future.

Strange thing about curiosity in this case, it can exist on both sides of the coin

Sul.

 

I used to test a lot and share setups, but with Vista (and to a lesser degree Windows7) having such wonderfull internal protection mechanisms, I don't use third party security anymore. So most is opinion and not reliable tested, trust me don't believe me

 

What counts as a reliable source for me?

Verifiability, how, by trying out by my self.
A test or article by a third-party sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.

 

Some things that work for reliable sources doesn't work for me, and some do. So I read with interest what people here have to say about security, and then try it to see if I can get it to work. So for me trial-and-error is as important as reliable sources.

 

I agree with this. Sometimes, it's far easier to learn from others experiences prior to adopting a concept, program, etc since you are more mentally prepared of possible problems that may occur. However, nothing beats 1st-hand experience since that's where you get the 'bad' taste for yourself and learn the 'hard way' not to repeat it.

Btw, that reminds me that I had a few shirts with "school of hard knocks" on it in the past.