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Would this etiquette preclude people who have moved from LI from posting here as well? In your eyes, would their lack of current knowlege/current residency make their opinions invalid?
Maybe we should just put a "sticky" up on every town/hamlet on Long Island and prevent all personal interaction.
It all comes down to what is fact and what is opinion. And then, which opinions are more worthy than others about any given place. I feel that some posters base their opinions about certain places on what others have said about those places, generalizations and their own prejudices and not any worthy facts or first hand experiences of their own.
I think it would be better if people based their opinions on facts and/or first hand experiences on any given place. This doesn't mean that there can not be a discussion about any place, but the discussions should be based on relevant facts and/or first hand experiences and not conjecture.
How can we judge fairly if any place is good or not?
First of all there are the hard facts: stuff like town, hamlet, zipcode boundaries that WalterGreenspan would post. Facts include school district statistics, crime statistics, census bureau numbers, flood zone maps, sewer district maps, home prices and the like which have been posted.
Second there is first hand experience. That means a person has a pretty good idea what life is like in any given place because:
1. he/she presently lives in that place. The longer the better. The more valid the opinion. This also includes to a lesser degree the surrounding areas in which the person shops, travels through, etc...on a daily basis.
2. he/she had once lived in a certain place. Again, the longer the more valid the opinion.
A good example would be where you grew up. Also, the surrounding the areas as well. Although the more recent the residency the more valid the opinions.
3. He/she works in the area. Their occupation brings them into a certain place on a regular basis. Good examples would be police officer, fireman, teacher, mailman, etc.. They may see things up close, but their views are influenced by the narrow scoope of their contact with any given place. Also, real estate agents, home inspectors, and such...Their opinions are worthy, but not as much as someone who actually lives in the given area.
4. Casual passing through observations are the least valid of first hand experiences, but are not to be dismissed either. It all depends. Does driving past a place on the highway help form an opinion as worthy as actually getting off the highway and driving through the side streets of a town? Is bicycling or walking through the side streets of a town better than driving through? The closer one is to the actual "real" town and its people the more valid the conclusions will be based on close up observations.
5. Further down the list are opinions based on visiting an area. The longer the visit the more valid the opinion. But visitors never have time to gain any real feel for any given place. How could you judge what Florida is like after going to Disney.
So there you have it.
General rule of thumb is don't generalize about someone elses hometown. If you don't live there or never lived there that doesn't mean you can't have an opinion about the place, but that opinion should be based on real hard facts and/or personal observations.
Location: Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
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Like someone previously said, this forum would be pretty boring if we "had" to post our opinions of towns based on our own experiences. What about what we see in the news, hear from others, have discussions about with others, etc? I'm sure people who are looking to relocate to an area would like to hear all sides. If they don't care to hear from people who haven't lived in the area, so be it. You can't speak for everyone.
It all comes down to what is fact and what is opinion. And then, which opinions are more worthy than others about any given place. I feel that some posters base their opinions about certain places on what others have said about those places, generalizations and their own prejudices and not any worthy facts or first hand experiences of their own.
I think it would be better if people based their opinions on facts and/or first hand experiences on any given place. This doesn't mean that there can not be a discussion about any place, but the discussions should be based on relevant facts and/or first hand experiences and not conjecture.
How can we judge fairly if any place is good or not?
First of all there are the hard facts: stuff like town, hamlet, zipcode boundaries that WalterGreenspan would post. Facts include school district statistics, crime statistics, census bureau numbers, flood zone maps, sewer district maps, home prices and the like which have been posted.
Second there is first hand experience. That means a person has a pretty good idea what life is like in any given place because:
1. he/she presently lives in that place. The longer the better. The more valid the opinion. This also includes to a lesser degree the surrounding areas in which the person shops, travels through, etc...on a daily basis.
2. he/she had once lived in a certain place. Again, the longer the more valid the opinion.
A good example would be where you grew up. Also, the surrounding the areas as well. Although the more recent the residency the more valid the opinions.
3. He/she works in the area. Their occupation brings them into a certain place on a regular basis. Good examples would be police officer, fireman, teacher, mailman, etc.. They may see things up close, but their views are influenced by the narrow scoope of their contact with any given place. Also, real estate agents, home inspectors, and such...Their opinions are worthy, but not as much as someone who actually lives in the given area.
4. Casual passing through observations are the least valid of first hand experiences, but are not to be dismissed either. It all depends. Does driving past a place on the highway help form an opinion as worthy as actually getting off the highway and driving through the side streets of a town? Is bicycling or walking through the side streets of a town better than driving through? The closer one is to the actual "real" town and its people the more valid the conclusions will be based on close up observations.
5. Further down the list are opinions based on visiting an area. The longer the visit the more valid the opinion. But visitors never have time to gain any real feel for any given place. How could you judge what Florida is like after going to Disney.
So there you have it.
General rule of thumb is don't generalize about someone elses hometown. If you don't live there or never lived there that doesn't mean you can't have an opinion about the place, but that opinion should be based on real hard facts and/or personal observations.
Well now, this post I can agree with entirely....but it expresses a much different sentiment than the title of this thread! I try to drop some kind of qualifiers if it's a place I'm not intimately familiar with, but I would think that even without doing so that assumption could be made based on the context. It's really up to us as the readers of any given post to be able to differentiate between opinions and facts. It'd be nice if people were a little more realistic/truthful in their assessments, but I can usually spot that BS from a mile away. Big indicators are blanket statements, atrocious grammar, loads of punctuation (ie: freeport?!?! lol nothing but ms13 now gangs in the schools AVOID AT N E COST!!!!!) and of course the second, third, fourth and fifth hand information you mentioned. These forums are a great resource but I take everything with a grain of salt and would advise any prospective buyers to do the same. If I think a post is suspect, I'll usually read some of that poster's previous work and figure out where they're coming from....you can usually spot a theme (or agenda) pretty quick!!
I'm a big believer in facts and figures, mainly because I'm a big nerd, but also for more practical reasons. One thing I always consider, and something that I believe is entirely forgotten amongst many posters, is that those who come on here asking for advice could be from an extremely wide range of economic and cultural backgrounds. Believe it or not, places like Wyandanch and Hempstead are a huge step up from say....Detroit, Baltimore, Newark, Crown Heights (etc.).... To an 18 year old girl from Dix Hills, the definition of "ghetto" might be a burnt out headlight in her two year old BMW, but the "mean streets" of Glen Cove would be paradise for a lifelong Compton resident. Yeah, LI isn't perfect but I think it's embarassing the way a lot of places get dragged through the mud on here....by (back to your point) people who have extremely limited experiences, if any at all. Maybe Donald Trump would rather die than live in YOUR fancy house (not you, nbres) or do laundry himself....ever consider that?
That's why I prefer to add hard facts whenever possible. Numbers don't tell the whole story but they don't lie, they are what they are. I know a lot of people don't wanna hear it ("I DON'T CARE WHAT THE TEST SCORES ARE I'D NEVER SEND MY KID THERE AND NEITHER WOULD U WHO R U KIDDING?!!?") but they paint the least biased picture possible!!
However, all of that said....until we come up with a statistic to quantify arrogance and stupidity, I think the uninformed/misinformed posts will have to stay and we'll all just have to keep our BS sheilds in proper working order!!
Well now, this post I can agree with entirely....but it expresses a much different sentiment than the title of this thread! I try to drop some kind of qualifiers if it's a place I'm not intimately familiar with, but I would think that even without doing so that assumption could be made based on the context. It's really up to us as the readers of any given post to be able to differentiate between opinions and facts. It'd be nice if people were a little more realistic/truthful in their assessments, but I can usually spot that BS from a mile away. Big indicators are blanket statements, atrocious grammar, loads of punctuation (ie: freeport?!?! lol nothing but ms13 now gangs in the schools AVOID AT N E COST!!!!!) and of course the second, third, fourth and fifth hand information you mentioned. These forums are a great resource but I take everything with a grain of salt and would advise any prospective buyers to do the same. If I think a post is suspect, I'll usually read some of that poster's previous work and figure out where they're coming from....you can usually spot a theme (or agenda) pretty quick!!
I'm a big believer in facts and figures, mainly because I'm a big nerd, but also for more practical reasons. One thing I always consider, and something that I believe is entirely forgotten amongst many posters, is that those who come on here asking for advice could be from an extremely wide range of economic and cultural backgrounds. Believe it or not, places like Wyandanch and Hempstead are a huge step up from say....Detroit, Baltimore, Newark, Crown Heights (etc.).... To an 18 year old girl from Dix Hills, the definition of "ghetto" might be a burnt out headlight in her two year old BMW, but the "mean streets" of Glen Cove would be paradise for a lifelong Compton resident. Yeah, LI isn't perfect but I think it's embarassing the way a lot of places get dragged through the mud on here....by (back to your point) people who have extremely limited experiences, if any at all. Maybe Donald Trump would rather die than live in YOUR fancy house (not you, nbres) or do laundry himself....ever consider that?
That's why I prefer to add hard facts whenever possible. Numbers don't tell the whole story but they don't lie, they are what they are. I know a lot of people don't wanna hear it ("I DON'T CARE WHAT THE TEST SCORES ARE I'D NEVER SEND MY KID THERE AND NEITHER WOULD U WHO R U KIDDING?!!?") but they paint the least biased picture possible!!
However, all of that said....until we come up with a statistic to quantify arrogance and stupidity, I think the uninformed/misinformed posts will have to stay and we'll all just have to keep our BS sheilds in proper working order!!
I think many of the blanket statements are merely covers for either prejudice, racism or classism. If the generalization doesn't fall into one of the three mentioned categories than the generalization is based on ignorance. I'll stick my guns and just restate that the best opinions are based on facts and first hand experiences.
Your statements about Hempstead, etc...are on the money. Who is to say that one place is bad for all and another is great. We can't all live in Cold Spring Harbor (I'm just using CSH as an example, nothing against it), nor should we. Each person/family and each place is unique. What is good for one person/family may not fit the needs of another. To live in Cold Spring Harbor is not an option for most anyway. People have to find the place they think is good for them within their budgets.
Another thing. I hust want to comment on relying on news reports for information about places. To some degree it is useful, but remember newspapers are in the business of selling news. They tend to sensationalize trivial events and the reporters haves their own biases as well.
Mature people do know better. They tend to have a variety of life experiences in different places that will allow them to distinguish the Good from the Bad, but also see things from different perspectives.
I think many of the blanket statements are merely covers for either prejudice, racism or classism. If the generalization doesn't fall into one of the three mentioned categories than the generalization is based on ignorance. I'll stick my guns and just restate that the best opinions are based on facts and first hand experiences.
Your statements about Hempstead, etc...are on the money. Who is to say that one place is bad for all and another is great. We can't all live in Cold Spring Harbor (I'm just using CSH as an example, nothing against it), nor should we. Each person/family and each place is unique. What is good for one person/family may not fit the needs of another. To live in Cold Spring Harbor is not an option for most anyway. People have to find the place they think is good for them within their budgets.
Another thing. I hust want to comment on relying on news reports for information about places. To some degree it is useful, but remember newspapers are in the business of selling news. They tend to sensationalize trivial events and the reporters haves their own biases as well.
Mature people do know better. They tend to have a variety of life experiences in different places that will allow them to distinguish the Good from the Bad, but also see things from different perspectives.
Let us not forget that people live in these towns and own homes in these towns and bring up their children in these towns. Like defaming a character, you can defame a town. It's unfair to the people who own homes in these towns. One man's opinion can destroy another man's garden. A lot of the opinions are "I heard" and "I saw" and they don't belong to the people who live in the towns. I've been an advocate against ripping towns apart since I came on this site.
Location: Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
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I feel like this is an indirect way of saying the OP doesn't like my posts about a certain subject I responded to in a thread. There's always going to be opinions that aren't liked by others, but what's so wrong with saying how we feel about a certain area? Just because I don't live in a certain town, doesn't mean my experiences of it mean nothing.
To be fair. If only town residents were to post you would get more rose colored spin than fact sometimes. Who wants there town to get a worse reputation, further risking the tax base and socio-economic future. Nothing wrong with pride in your neighborhood!
Is Rocky Point really that nice ?!? I've never been, but reading this forum it is the place to buy on Long Island.
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Excellent Post, I concur.
