Originally posted by: XiZiT
Hi, I don't post much as I'm mostly a lurker among forums, but have to give my 2cents here. The H&F forum seems like a good idea but I would be hesitant about giving and receiving advice here. I'm pretty sure people will ask the general questions here as they do elsewhere (bodybuilding.com, fitness.com, etc.) but who exactly is certified or at the very least reputable enough to be giving advice? In contrast to the "official" fitness forums on the web, where active posters and experts, actually post tutorial, videos, and pictures of themselves and others can vouch for them, how can we judge who here knows what they're talking about? And while you may not care, or simply say "well, no one knows the other users in the _____ forum either", you have to remember that when it comes to health and fitness we're talking about your actual health and body. You don't want Joe Shmoe, Warcraft III alpha wizard, to be giving you supposedly 'expert' advice on how much protein you need or the type of supplements you should try/buy.
This is a very dangerous forum in my opinion because it can literally be life or death, or bad health, if given the wrong advice (as opposed to Hot Deals forum, which can lead to minor headaches dealing with rebates).
My 2cents.
I don't agree at all. Anyone with any brains in that head of theirs will check the advice given here, elsewhere on the net. Wherever I get advice, be it here or somewhere else, I always get a "2nd opinion" from another site, and another and another. Once I see many different sites and people say the same thing, I can be pretty damned sure it's a good advice. This tactic has never failed me.
Also there's such a thing as common sense - if something you are doing feels wrong, you stop it! You don't need a professional to keep you from getting hurt, you got YOU for that.
I know many will disagree with me, but if an adult is reading this, he/she should know enough by now to avoid following wrong advice, and if a kid is reading, it's his parents that are responsible for his wellbeing. This forum is the LAST "thing" to blame if anyone gets hurt or dies following advice given here.
This is off topic, but it reminds me of a situation we had in my High School.
Because kids were smoking weed in the bathrooms, the school enforced an idiotic rule where:
1)All bathrooms are closed during the break.
2)Bathrooms are closed first 10 minutes of each class.
3)Bathrooms are closed last 10 minutes of every class.
With a class lasting only 42min or less, this left only 22minutes for people to go to the bathroom. But the idiocy didn't stop there. You couldn't go to the bathroom without the pass, and with everyone needing the pass and being gone for at least 10min(sometimes a lot more), I often ended up in a situation where I couldn't use the bathroom a whole day unless I worked up the balls to simply walk out of the class with the teacher screaming at me behind my back and threatening me to call security. I actually got sent to the dean for this once. This was just a regular public school by the way.
The reason why I mention this is:
Because of the weed smoking kids everyone ended up getting punished and even "hurt" if you want to look at it this way. Same thing with this forum... I'd be quite angry if because of some people who think advice given here might be dangerous to some since it is not given out by qualified professionals, this branch of the forum would be shut down, more heavily moderated or censored in some ways. The philosophy here is very simple. If you feel this forum is dangerous to anyone in any way, don't read it, and don't visit it. If anyone ends up getting hurt or dies - this happened because of their foolishness, and their foolishness alone. I know I might sound very radical in my views, and I apologize if I sound rude in any way. I just felt like I should give my two cents on this matter.