Comments on: And Help You I Shall!

By: OJ

OJ — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:53:05 +0000

Ryan: I don’t think I agree with you. My points are from the perspective of the person who answers the question, and really what you should be doing is answering the question and moving on. If people aren’t sure about what they’re doing, then they should state that in the question. For example: I need to use tech X, to do function Y. Can I please have some help? The answer should consist of details of X and Y, and almost nothing else. If the asker also says: I’m not sure if I’m approaching this the right way, so if you have any other suggestions regarding other technologies or languages then please let me know. THEN you have the chance to evangelise. That’s just my view though
Matt: That’s a very good point. There are lots of cases where people are more than happy to waste other people’s time by asking the question, but then won’t give the answer themselves if they manage to solve it. This just goes to show how little consideration there is out there for others. People who need help tend to be very selfish. Manners are lacking, and “giving back” is something that they just don’t consider.

By: OJ

OJ — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:53:00 +0000

By: Moffmo

Moffmo — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:34:57 +0000

There is something else that also annoys me.

A question is asked.

Some brief answers are given.

Original Poster says. I have sorted it, no worries!

PLEASE put up the solution that you figured out in case anyone happens to google along this page.

This is how 80% of my googled pages come across

By: Moffmo

Moffmo — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:34:00 +0000

There is something else that also annoys me.

A question is asked.

Some brief answers are given.

Original Poster says. I have sorted it, no worries!

PLEASE put up the solution that you figured out in case anyone happens to google along this page.

This is how 80% of my googled pages come across

By: ryan

ryan — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 02:37:39 +0000

While those answers don’t answer the question as asked, they still provide an important service when speaking over the internet. If that exchange happened in person, I would say the answers were wasting the questioners time, being obtuse, or just not paying attention. However on the internet, there is a very low cost for communication — its easy to provide information, but its also very easy to ignore information that contains a high noise level; in fact its considered a necessary skill in an information age.

(It also does depend on the culture of the specific forum. If the topic is specific and high traffic, you should follow etiquette by stowing your opinion if its not relevant to the question.)

The benefit to the asker is that, even if the asker is very smart and experienced, it is still possible that one of the tangential answers is actually something that the asker hadn’t thought of yet, and thus could be considered “thinking outside the box”. This is especially pronounced for me working in Japan, where its culturally common to simply do whatever you’re told to do without thinking if there is a better way to get things done.

For example its possible that this persons requirements were poorly stated and while win32 was what was asked for, really any native looking app might do.

Where this particular exchange fell down, is that there is no one who addressed the question as asked in addition to furnishing their own opinion. The ideal answer would have been:

“Here is my fav win32 tutorial http://example.com, but I really recommend you use my fav tech X instead.”