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[InTheAir]

I agree research is essential. I think some people don't really know how to do it, that's why you get so many repeats of the same questions on forums.
My mother is a scientist so research is part of our family culture (obviously I made a slip up when I joined this forum, as I have seen several condescending and rude posts by Michael since).
If my mother was a checkout assistant and I became a shop assistant too I probably wouldn't have been introduced to the concept of educating myself, or judging what is a load of crap and what is truly useful. There are a lot of crap bird sites out there with people rambling about height dominance and stuff. I've even read some really dated or plain bizarre stuff on vets websites!

If they really want a bird and you give them some tools like names of notable parrot consultants and trainers who have written great articles on keeping parrots and how much work it is to Google you are starting the ball rolling in a good direction.

Whether they start learning to learn or not is really their perogative... But at least you have tried, and some people will take to it and become great parrot friends.
Being a jerk nearly guarantees they will not learn anything useful and they might get a parrot anyway and remain ignorant.

The YouTube video I want to see is Bowie the ringneck having a tantrum or doing something really irritating! Lol!
I have quite a fear of the lines 'I just bought ringneck because I like watching Bowie on YouTube...' and the follow up a few weeks later 'my ringneck hates me and won't stop screaming'.. It would be much better if we could spread the culture of education and information to prevent parrots ending up in unhappy situations.

[marie83]

I've been here a while now so have seen many people come and go on this forum. My take on it is whilst I don't agree with everything Michael says and I sometimes think he could put things in a better way, I don't think he is rude. I've seen him have lengthy conversations with people who just wont listen despite him explaining the hows and whys. Michael is passionate in his love of parrots and has spent many hours researching, writing articles etc to enable people to have easy access to education in a way that is easy to replicate. Sadly a large proportion of people just don't listen so I can see how frustrating that is and how that frustration may come across in the wrong manner. Generally you can get an idea of who is open to learning from the initial post, sometimes a straight to the point post makes the OP stop and think rather than a long block of text. Unfortunately being online its hard to gauge which way is the most effective way of getting a message across, nor if tongue in cheek comments would be taken the wrong way.