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==Semantics==
==Semantics==
It can be both a disparaging and friendly term, referring to a [[Wiktionary:neophyte|neophyte]], someone who behaves as such, or someone who is seen as such. A newb is generally a positive term, while n00b usually has a negative connotation. For example the phrase "[[George Washington]] is a n00b." is considered an insult.
It can be both a disparaging and friendly term, referring to a [[Wiktionary:neophyte|neophyte]], someone who behaves as such, or someone who is seen as such. A newb is generally a positive term, while n00b usually has a negative connotation. For example the phrase "[[Colin Norris]] is a n00b." is considered an insult.


The word itself is probably a corruption of ''new boy''; a new arrival in a school and who is, therefore, vulnerable to bullying of various kinds, such as [[hazing]] or [[fagging]]. It could also derive from "new beginner".
The word itself is probably a corruption of ''new boy''; a new arrival in a school and who is, therefore, vulnerable to bullying of various kinds, such as [[hazing]] or [[fagging]]. It could also derive from "new beginner".

Revision as of 12:06, 18 January 2006

A newbie is a newcomer to a particular field, the term being commonly used on the Internet, where it might refer to new, inexperienced, or ignorant users of a game, a newsgroup, an operating system or the Internet itself. The term is generally regarded as an insult, although in many cases it is used in purposes of negative reinforcement by more experienced/knowledgeable people, urging "newbies" to learn more about whatever field or area in question.

Variant spellings, such as newb, noob, nub, nib or n00b (in "l33tsp34k"), are numerous and common in Internet use, particularly in the Internet language Leet.

Semantics

It can be both a disparaging and friendly term, referring to a neophyte, someone who behaves as such, or someone who is seen as such. A newb is generally a positive term, while n00b usually has a negative connotation. For example the phrase "Colin Norris is a n00b." is considered an insult.

The word itself is probably a corruption of new boy; a new arrival in a school and who is, therefore, vulnerable to bullying of various kinds, such as hazing or fagging. It could also derive from "new beginner".

"Newbie" was used prior to this as slang in the U.S. Military to denote men who had finished technical school (so no longer a recruit and rookie) and were just arriving to their first permanent assignment.

Discouraging newbies

In some contexts, such as on Usenet and in multiplayer video games, being a newbie is discouraged. Newbies may ask questions that seem extremely simple to experienced users, or disrupt normal order with their lack of skills or etiquette in a certain type of technology. For example, video game players may dislike newbies because they think newbies will hurt or bring down the collective efforts of a team game. Usenet posters may dislike newbies for bringing up off-topic discussion or violating netiquette.

In some groups, the term "newbie" is used by experienced users to refer to any newcomer, whether the newcomer acts ignorantly or not. In this case, the regulars assert their position with a sort of hazing (sometimes called pwning in video games).

In some MMORPGs a newbie is anyone who is lower-leveled than the person making the remark, regardless of actual time spent playing the game. (For example, a level 30 player in World of Warcraft may consider a level 10 player a newbie.) Some forums and MMORPGs have banned some of the more common spelling variations ("newb", "nub", "noob", "n00b", "n4b") in an attempt to reduce flame wars. This has, of course, led to more variations.

Referring to regular members as newbies is often considered to be highly insulting. The implication is that they are behaving as if they do not know the rules when in fact they have had more than sufficient opportunity to learn them.

Now, the word "noob" has spread around. Many people may call people noobs in the real world. Also, when playing consoles, people you are playing with will call the person losing a noob. The word "noob" is not only used in the terms with PC gaming.

Encouraging newbies

It is often a personal choice within a community whether to discourage or encourage newbies. For example, some GNU/Linux users may discourage non-technical users who try to install GNU/Linux, because supporting these users will be difficult and the newbies may be dissatisfied in the long run. On the other hand, some GNU/Linux users may prefer to encourage newbies, because it grows their userbase and may help the newbies learn more about computing.

Sometimes newbies are recognized as the most important members and received with extra attention. Some chat rooms, for example, have established rules to ask "oldies" to first answer the newbies' questions or concerns before resuming their ongoing discussions. Large Internet forums such as 2channel and Gaia Online have special boards for newbies to learn the basics of chatting on that forum.

Other communities do not treat newbies with a significantly elevated status, but do greet most of the friendly newbies with welcomes informing them of methods to receive assistance. In these situations, the term is basically synonymous with newcomer and is meant with or without affection. For example, Wikipedia has a firm policy of welcoming all new contributors whether or not their first edits are helpful to an encyclopedia. This way, users who make mistakes will be encouraged to learn the rules and keep contributing, rather than provoking censure or anger.

The positive interpretation is probably the more recent but has become quite common. The only way to determine the intended connotation is to examine the context.

Individuals may refer to themselves as newbies in a self-deprecating manner or in acknowledgment of their newcomer status, which may (or may not) lessen the amount of harassment they receive. This may have negative or positive connotations, depending on the standards of the community.

In IRC, newbies are both discouraged and encouraged, depending on the particular channel. There are channels on any of the major networks dedicated to catering to newbie questions and getting into the IRC community. However, beyond the scope of these introductory rooms there are many channels where common newbie mistakes are not tolerated. This may include, repeating the same sentence, begging for pirated software, immature insult slinging, attacking an operator, usage of color, and the use of channel bot search and file list commands (such as !find or @search). Most channels have rules that are posted as a link in the topic or sent to the user as an on-join message. Breaking said rules or established policy by someone who does not take the initiative to find out the rules can result in an instant kick-ban.

Newb vs. noob

Newb and noob may have somewhat different connotations. Newbs are simply newcomers—noob and n00b, on the other hand, generally means someone who is obnoxious, annoying, or breaks the rules; whether they are actual newcomers or not is mostly irrelevant. Therefore, a noob may be someone who has been around for a time but still engages in behavior that he or she should have learned is unacceptable. Noobs are generally confident in what they are doing, but in reality are annoying others. "Newb" is not necessarily an insulting word, but "noob" is.

More experienced players are often encouraged to give friendly advice and help to Newbs, to support them as they tackle the learning curve of whichever game they're playing, and some game servers are set up explicitly for the purpose of allowing Newbs to gain experience before entering more competitive environments.

"Noob" can also mean a person who claims to know a lot about a subject but in truth does not. It was first used in hacker groups on the BBS chat systems in the 1980s. It is important to note that noob and newb are not necessarily interchangeable. Many times the term noob or n00b will be used by veterans to degrade a user for their lack of knowledge, or claims to know more than they truely do.

Recently, the spelling noob has been used more interchangeably with "newb", however, and is being used in a more joking manner, usually among friends and users on good terms when one user makes a mistake that most veterans would know better not to do, whereas a "newb" or "noob" wouldn't know better. For example, in the computer sense, a user on a bulletin board may call a veteran user as a noob in a joking manner because they didn't search for a topic currently open with the same discussion before posting a discussion of their own.

In online gaming, the term is also often used as a general insult. Frustrated players on the losing team may refer to the winning team as noobs. In this case there is no actual connotation of newness meant; the word is simply being used as an insult. By the same token, members of a dominating team may use the term "noobs" (n00bs) to further frustrate their opposition by implying a general lack of skill on the losing team's part, such as "camping" (staying in the general vicinity for an extended period of time) or wastefully firing at a wall. Noob might also be used by veteran players to criticize cheap tactics or overusage of unbalanced weaponry. E.g., in an online team game where friendly fire is turned off, a noob "tactic" would be to overuse explosives in cramped areas around fellow teammates. Noob also specifically applies in games where team-play is important, and the players choose to completely ignore the team structure and goals.

Noob has frequently been written in different forms. Because of the proximity of the "j" key to the "n" key, players in online games often typed "j00b" or "joob" by accident, and the recent proliferation of "nub" (used to shorten the word noob) has often turned into "jub". Though neither "joob" or "jub" have any meaning, their connection with "noob" makes the two words equivalent. "B00b" and "m00b" sometimes appear in a similar manner ("b" and "m" are right beside "n" in a standard computer keyboard). Similar to the internet terminology "pwned" which originated from owned when an anonymous gamer made a typing error by pressing the "p" key which is located to the right of the "o" key on a standard computer keyboard.

U.S. Navy usage

The term "non-useful body", or N.U.B. was coined in the submariner world. A brand new sailor reporting aboard a submarine had to earn his "dolphins" (submarine-qualification: learning everything about a submarine in order to quickly and decisively assist in damage control). Until the sailor became so qualified, he could not do his assigned function aboard the submarine. During this time, he was declared a non-useful-body, and was generally harassed until he completed it. The term has since migrated to the surface fleet, and is used to negatively refer to new sailors, who are not as experienced and useful as their shipmates.

Likely etymology of n00b

The following is the likely etymology of n00b:

  1. newbie (new person)
  2. newb (shortened version of newbie)
  3. noob (a variant probably for both phonetics and "Leetspeaking")
  4. n00b (Partial Leetspeak of "noob")
  5. n00bz0r (Another variation of Leetspeak of "noob"}


Newbies in Internet culture

Since the internet has long been an attractor of people, especially children, to sophisticated areas of expertise (programming, gaming, system administration, etc.), there have been certain cultural and behavioral patterns that result as a conflict of newbies against veterans, veterans against newbies, and newbies against newbies; these clashes typically result in newbies showing childish behavior. Newbies have the bad habit, whether accidental or purposely, of asking obvious questions in online forums and chat rooms that could be quickly solved by use of a search engine.

Newbies in Internet gaming

In gaming, newbies tend to exhibit one or more of the following behaviors:

  • Poor sportsmanship: newbies might communicate explicit/racial/prejudicial comments to the victorious parties, in situations where the newbies lose. Blame might be redirected to an external phenomenon, such as a bandwidth spike. Other poor sportsmanship actions include: disconnecting in a game once victory is deemed impossible (albeit this may prevent statistics from being recorded, both for the victors and the losers). In team games, newbies might team- kill friendly players as a vent of their frustration.
  • The inclination to shout random phrases when voice is enabled, that may be nonsensical and/or use an overwhelming amount of explicit language. This is especially a problem on Xbox Live and Counterstrike. This can drown out aural environmental indicators, which could lead to a detrimental gameplay effect to the other parties involved.
  • Little or no use of team tactics, or understanding how to cooperate. This is especially critical in games with players assuming specific roles on a team, such as Battlefield 2 or TeamFortress. Moreover, a tendency to be 'greedy' in regards to personal user experience versus the team objectives, i.e. always using a vehicle without being inline with objectives.
  • A lack of understanding about the game environment. This includes not understanding the concept of friendly and hostile players, combat/trading zones and non-combat/trading zones, or ignorance to game world rules regarding player conduct.
  • A tendency to use only the most powerful weapon possible, such as always using the rocket launcher when possible in Doom 3, even if the situation would call for a different approach.
  • A tendency to utilize cheating programs, after a period of frustration experienced from getting beaten by veterans. This is most frequently seen in CounterStrike and Diablo.
  • A tendency to require the quick fix solution. In role-playing games for instance, this would include such actions as begging for free in-game items off other players.

Noob talk

An underground joke is "Noob talk" or "NOB TALK". Noob talk is when an individual uses harsh spelling errors and terrible punctuation to insult noobs. A lot of "real" noob talk is found on games such as Gunbound, Ragnarok Online, Counter-Strike, and RuneScape. Also, there are many examples of noob talk on game-related websites, especially forums. An example of this dialect is "ITAM PLEX" (translated into "Items Please") (In Runescape, the higher leveled players usually use the term "PLX" or "PLOX" when imitating N00b Speak."). Noob talk is fairly simple to grasp. The main characteristic of noob talk is to makes numerous spelling mistakes and overuse common Internet slang. It is easy to discern between "real" noob talk and "joke" noob talk. In many ways, this is similar to the 1980s B1FF postings on Usenet.


Example of real "noob talk":

  • OMG LOLOLOLO U SUK!!!!!!11

Example of joke "noob talk":


Utilization of noob or n00b as an insult is very similar in act being called a troll. I.e., there are certain actions which will trigger someone's being labeled as a noob or n00b, as a form of peer-to-peer negative sanction.

Although apparently originating in descriptions of ignorant actions common among new players, its usage extends to high-level players who act in these ways, and does not cover new players (newbs) who do not act in these ways. Its pervasiveness as a general insult or means of chiding players for annoying, foolish or disruptive actions probably originates from the banning, censoring or penalising of more common insults and swearing in many online gaming settings. Someone online may call someone a "n00b", who offline would call him or her a bastard or idiot.

References