Gold members are abusing this site
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In both cases, the questions are simple and could have been easily been answered if there was a will to help. I mean I understand the frustration of cross posting or posting programming questions in the lounge and all that crap, but I think its becoming more of an "Obsession" and whats up with the Good Question/Bad Question buttons? I thought all questions are good.Thats what we were thought in schools anyways! It seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question !
Bassam Saoud wrote:
Thats what we were thought in schools anyways!
That's not what i took away. A good question is one that deserves a good answer. A good question demands a good answer, setting the stage for it in such a way that, once answered, the answer immediately looks at home, settled in and comfortable, the two together halves of a now-complete whole. A bad question collects bad answers like a dead rat collects flies, creating something degrading to the answerer, insulting to the questioner, and offensive to any third-party reader such as yourself.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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i agree some of the people here take the chance to just rip the poster up rather than address the question. say nothing if you have nothing nice to say. here is an MVP being so helpful http://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/View.aspx?fid=3785&tid=2640834[^] unless it is a soapbox thread then flame on
When people ask the same questions over and over, and refuse to learn, or to do any research of their own, what should we do ? This is a free service, our reward is seeing people get better, I'd have thought.
Christian Graus No longer a Microsoft MVP, but still happy to answer your questions.
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In both cases, the questions are simple and could have been easily been answered if there was a will to help. I mean I understand the frustration of cross posting or posting programming questions in the lounge and all that crap, but I think its becoming more of an "Obsession" and whats up with the Good Question/Bad Question buttons? I thought all questions are good.Thats what we were thought in schools anyways! It seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question !
Since you went to the trouble of bringing in actual examples, i'll do the same. Here are two recent questions from the WebDev forum: Firefox is the odd one out[^] This question is phrased poorly - he's obviously frustrated because code that worked in IE doesn't work in Firefox, and lets that get the better of him and his question. Still, he provides enough information to give a clear answer: the relevant code that worked for him in IE. I'm not sure that i was able to solve his problem, but i do feel confident in the ability of my reply to correct the problem he described. Setting style to a div's overflow scroll bar[^] I'll probably never know what this poor soul's real question was. He managed to state it in such a vague, imprecise manner that i felt compelled to fall back on a humorously literal interpretation for my first reply. He takes another chance at it, but again throws away the opportunity to actually describe the problem he's seeing. I'm forced to assume that he is working with such a poor understanding of the systems involved that when his cargo-cult efforts to achieve results went awry he was left without any clear idea of even what it was he was trying to do. Or perhaps he was simply too lazy to bother typing up a description of what he saw on the screen before him. It's questions like this, and the folk asking them, that suck all the life from the forums.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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In both cases, the questions are simple and could have been easily been answered if there was a will to help. I mean I understand the frustration of cross posting or posting programming questions in the lounge and all that crap, but I think its becoming more of an "Obsession" and whats up with the Good Question/Bad Question buttons? I thought all questions are good.Thats what we were thought in schools anyways! It seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question !
Bassam Saoud wrote:
It seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question
No, you need just a little bit of sanity to ask question. Many times, I start writing a question, mainly on CP forums and I end up canceling it all together. Why? In the process of writing the question, I realize what I need and figure out what the solution to my question is. What is annoying is that, most of the questions, it does not look they even did any effort of understanding what the question is all about. come on, if some one does not understand what a delegate is, how can you expect him/her to answer it in in interview. at least that should be a wake up call to go and learn what in the world is a delegate. I don't think it will be learned to throwing a question on CP. It is perfectly ok for someone to ask a question something like I am trying to learn about delegates, any pointers, websites ..... or I did read such and such and I need to understand/learn about .... you see this shows some effort on the questioners side. Just my 2 cents.
Yusuf
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Humble is the best approach when asking for help... But it also helps if you have tried to help yourself first. I didn't get the opinion that the first poster even tried to look it up first. Garbage in, Garbage out! One the second one, the original post had great responses. If you post in the wrong forum, then you deserve whatever you get. Hogan
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Give beginners a break! Thread[^] or Another Thread[^] Have fun, but at least answer the questions. Okay, it’s a cross post, but does that have to be mentioned 10 times by 10 different members? And none answered the poor guy's question. This is not 1 in a million, its happening all the time!
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In both cases, the questions are simple and could have been easily been answered if there was a will to help. I mean I understand the frustration of cross posting or posting programming questions in the lounge and all that crap, but I think its becoming more of an "Obsession" and whats up with the Good Question/Bad Question buttons? I thought all questions are good.Thats what we were thought in schools anyways! It seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question !
Bassam Saoud wrote:
could have been easily been answered if there was a will to help.
I think there is definately a will to help. I think the problem is that, as Shog pointed out, there is a general apathy and lack of willingness to do even a minimun amount of prior research and an expectation that people will simply hand out an answer.
Bassam Saoud wrote:
and whats up with the Good Question/Bad Question buttons? I thought all questions are good.Thats what we were thought in schools anyways! It seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question !
The Good/Bad buttons are an attempt at simplifying the voting on questions. In general, all questions are good but that doesn't mean all questions are well asked. I think that is the intent behind those buttons.
Scott Dorman
Microsoft® MVP - Visual C# | MCPD President - Tampa Bay IASA [Blog][Articles][Forum Guidelines]
Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are. - Buckaroo Banzai
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When people ask the same questions over and over, and refuse to learn, or to do any research of their own, what should we do ? This is a free service, our reward is seeing people get better, I'd have thought.
Christian Graus No longer a Microsoft MVP, but still happy to answer your questions.
You are right Christian. I generally suck at writing good code, but before I post a question in the forums I exhaust all avenues of search I can think of before asking. That and my morbid fear of public humiliation generally ensure I stick by the rules :-D
I don't speak Idiot - please talk slowly and clearly
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When people ask the same questions over and over, and refuse to learn, or to do any research of their own, what should we do ? This is a free service, our reward is seeing people get better, I'd have thought.
Christian Graus No longer a Microsoft MVP, but still happy to answer your questions.
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So then, your answer to the problem of apathetic queries is... more apathy? :-\
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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and it reduces the memory requirements of the site,by reducing the number of crap posts wasting countless bytes of server space!!!!! that is something you should be concerned about ;P
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*checks his post count* Naw, prolly too late to start caring about wasting bytes on the site. :-O
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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Bassam Saoud wrote:
And none answered the poor guy's question
Are you under the impression that it's a requirement that all questions asked in the forums must be answered?
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface
Oakman wrote:
all questions asked in the forums must be answered?
Not the dumb questions or ones that have a very obvious answer that can be found with a little effort.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
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When people ask the same questions over and over, and refuse to learn, or to do any research of their own, what should we do ? This is a free service, our reward is seeing people get better, I'd have thought.
Christian Graus No longer a Microsoft MVP, but still happy to answer your questions.
Christian Graus wrote:
ask the same questions over and over, and refuse to learn, or to do any research of their own, what should we do ?
Do nothing but chastise them over their laziness. I was always under the impression programmers/software developers should have some kind of problem solving skills, and if people rush to help idiots over simple little things, how are they to develop any serious skills?
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
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Probably the programmers are frustrating exactly from the fact that the questions are too “simple”. The answers of these questions are in the books and/or universities…not in the internet forum, even if this forum name is CP.
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word.
Deyan Georgiev wrote:
The answers of these questions are in the books and/or universities…not in the internet forum, even if this forum name is CP.
What? This is a forum brother. A forum? The best way to get an answer. Give me a textbook that gives you a live discussion and different perspective on solving a problem.
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Bassam Saoud wrote:
seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question !
No so. One just needs at least half a brain to post a question. It is the vague and lame questions that can be likely answered by a quick google search that chap me.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
Paul Conrad wrote:
No so. One just needs at least half a brain to post a question. It is the vague and lame questions that can be likely answered by a quick google search that chap me.
Why is it OK to post a question on google and not ask on CP? CP is a popular website that appears in most searches because of the heavy duty information that exist on this site.Most of the folks here are beginners at the start of their learning process.Have you ever thought that they may not know what they are looking for? They read an article that they found in their search result but that they didnt understand it? They are just looking for a professional that can help them understand a concept in a simple way.
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A bad question is one that can't be answered. Like 'when I click on a data grid, I get an object somehing exception HELP !!! URGENT !!!!'
Bassam Saoud wrote:
could have been easily been answered if there was a will to help
Answering the really easy questions doesn't help. I am not really answering much anymore b/c I get downvoted all the time for trying to lead a horse to water instead of just throwing water at them, too many people here don't want to learn, they want someone to do their job for them, perpetually.
Christian Graus No longer a Microsoft MVP, but still happy to answer your questions.
Christian Graus wrote:
Answering the really easy questions doesn't help. I am not really answering much anymore b/c I get downvoted all the time for trying to lead a horse to water instead of just throwing water at them, too many people here don't want to learn, they want someone to do their job for them, perpetually.
Downvoted? who cares man ! You guys are really respected by the community. I mean what do you want more that your blog being constantly visited, articles and so on.
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Since you went to the trouble of bringing in actual examples, i'll do the same. Here are two recent questions from the WebDev forum: Firefox is the odd one out[^] This question is phrased poorly - he's obviously frustrated because code that worked in IE doesn't work in Firefox, and lets that get the better of him and his question. Still, he provides enough information to give a clear answer: the relevant code that worked for him in IE. I'm not sure that i was able to solve his problem, but i do feel confident in the ability of my reply to correct the problem he described. Setting style to a div's overflow scroll bar[^] I'll probably never know what this poor soul's real question was. He managed to state it in such a vague, imprecise manner that i felt compelled to fall back on a humorously literal interpretation for my first reply. He takes another chance at it, but again throws away the opportunity to actually describe the problem he's seeing. I'm forced to assume that he is working with such a poor understanding of the systems involved that when his cargo-cult efforts to achieve results went awry he was left without any clear idea of even what it was he was trying to do. Or perhaps he was simply too lazy to bother typing up a description of what he saw on the screen before him. It's questions like this, and the folk asking them, that suck all the life from the forums.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
Shog9 wrote:
I'll probably never know what this poor soul's real question was. He managed to state it in such a vague, imprecise manner that i felt compelled to fall back on a humorously literal interpretation for my first reply. He takes another chance at it, but again throws away the opportunity to actually describe the problem he's seeing. I'm forced to assume that he is working with such a poor understanding of the systems involved that when his cargo-cult efforts to achieve results went awry he was left without any clear idea of even what it was he was trying to do. Or perhaps he was simply too lazy to bother typing up a description of what he saw on the screen before him. It's questions like this, and the folk asking them, that suck all the life from the forums.
Well you did answer after all, I mean you took the time to understand the question and answer. I am not sure English is his first language even though He is in the united states.
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Bassam Saoud wrote:
It seems you need a masters degree in computer science to post a question
No, you need just a little bit of sanity to ask question. Many times, I start writing a question, mainly on CP forums and I end up canceling it all together. Why? In the process of writing the question, I realize what I need and figure out what the solution to my question is. What is annoying is that, most of the questions, it does not look they even did any effort of understanding what the question is all about. come on, if some one does not understand what a delegate is, how can you expect him/her to answer it in in interview. at least that should be a wake up call to go and learn what in the world is a delegate. I don't think it will be learned to throwing a question on CP. It is perfectly ok for someone to ask a question something like I am trying to learn about delegates, any pointers, websites ..... or I did read such and such and I need to understand/learn about .... you see this shows some effort on the questioners side. Just my 2 cents.
Yusuf
Yusuf wrote:
you see this shows some effort on the questioners side.
Never knew it was required ! The guy have a question. Answer or skip its your choice.