Why do you surf this academic community of HKGalden ? Not only does it become the question for me, but also for everyone. There is a strong atmosphere of constructive and interactive discussion contributed by cultural appreciation, scientific sharing, and open debates since its establishment. Yet, it becomes worsen day by day. Starting from the chaotic scolding and source sharing, the market position of this community tends to change from mutual discussion to stock exchange centre. Even though there are vehement oppositions, some still maintain their own attitude to contribute to the community. As far as foreseeability of a substantial detriment onto the interest of HKGalden member is concerned, I would like to express my strong opposition against the rotten culture of academic materialisation.

What does academic materialisation stands for? It refers to the prevalent atmosphere of turning mutual discussion into exchange of academic sources. it is common when seeing students to acquire exam questions or summary notes, or even collusive acts to finish projects. For instance, if there is a group of students responsible for developing the iPhone Application, they tend to collude with other students for similar modules to be shared, or even directly copied other's work and claim as their own work. They tend to churn out projects merely satisfying the requirement initiated by the professors or clients rather than starting to develop their own work from learning the fundamental principles behind. In other courses of the universities, the pupils tend to ask for working of the previous assignments or even examination papers. Some will even ask through forums on the Internet such as lsforum.net(小卒論壇) and uwants. They tend to get thing learned merely to pass the examinations and deceive themselves they have got some professions. These are the main backdrops and hence the factors leading to academic materialisation.


First and foremost, such change of atmosphere in this community prevent forum members from active learning. Direct source sharing or quoting essays without adding own's view and elaboration turns forum members from acquiring the knowledge by own into acquiring the second-hand hearsay from others. No matter how easy to get to understand know-why and know-how, it is inevitable for everyone, if not all species including aliens to get hands-on experience and deep thinking of logical flow behind the knowledge. Learning something merely hearing from the others without thinking and experience cannot convert their lectures to your own skill and expertise. Otherwise, there will be more impotent people that they can persuade others that they can do something but eventually they cannot do anything.

As well as the learning attitude of academic discussion is reversed, prevalence of academic materisation imposes drastic harm to the morale of other honest members sharing their expertise or more importantly, the path to acquire the expertise.
The rules of acquiring popularity of forum post with academic knowledge is similar, if not same to the counterparts in other communities of this forum. It is human nature that the members tends to get fast knowledge instead of drilling the knowledge.
The other members sharing their intrinsic knowledge or expertise in their own words probably be punished by popular academic post with only the source link inside. Some may argue they may provide direct feedback or raise questions within the post, it is also the nature for the buyers not doing follow-ups to enhance their knowledge as long as their proficiency is reached. Hence, there are less and less members honestly share their knowledge and post source reference instead. In the long run, the community becomes the another Google Search or Bing search containing the knowledge base but no discussion. What is the point for the forum members or visitors to visit another Google sites within this forum?


Last but most importantly, this change of atmosphere promotes deception. It is excepted that such prevalence of academic materialisation provides a seabed of malicious members or visitors to learn something it may be wrong or contrary to the fundamental principles, both in science and ethics. Since some of the posts includes reference or source documents, other members may study a few to claim themselves as professionals.The so-called professions will become the scums in the world and spread false knowledge. Some peoples nearby may not have strong knowledge or logical thinking about their sharing. They tends to trust and acquire as one of their knowledge base for actions. If there are other peoples or own accidents to disprove the ideology spread by these members, the others tend to doubt the credibility and genuineness of the members or even the content of the community. Given that genuineness of knowledge sharing and academic honesty are the prerequisites to successful academic community like Quora, Stackoverflow, there is no guarantee that the popularity of this community and hence the forum will maintain. Current and frequent withdrawals of forum members and chaotic discussion have already the strong signals to support this claim.

In conclusion, there are reversed learning purposes, punishing honest member for sharing know-how, promotion of deception to impose substantial detriments to this community, hence the reputation of the forum. All forum members should know the consequence of academic materisation and hence importance of genuine learning and constructive discussion.