Never the quality - Feel the width ? 4

[guestgulkan]

Personnaly I am appalled at the seemingly low levels of questions being posted to the forums.
Many of the questions come from so called 'Technical Users' and 'Programmers'.
Some of these questions from 'programmers' I can answer of the top of my head and I'm a 'technical user'.
Some of the technical questions are so trivial, I just cannot be bothered with them.
Are my standards too high??

 

[manarth]

I take your point but -

when you register with Tek-Tips, you have to select a user type.

User Type * Select A Type: MISIS/IT--Management / Programmer / ISP / Instructor / Vendor / TechnicalUser
*(Yes, I am a technical computer professional)

I don't see the option for "newbie"
I'm sure there a number of TekTip users who are not IT professionals...perhaps the question is - should the site be strictly reserved for pro's (i.e. people who get paid for their IT work.)

I'm also sure some-one's "Technical" is another person's newb - and who's to say that the person asking the "simple" question hasn't got a field of knowledge in another IT area?

I'm reaonable on TCP/IP issues, happy with VB & Java - but absolutely clueless about crystal reports (what are they anyway??) so I could seem a complete ^*()% in that forum.

"so trivial, I just cannot be bothered with them."
Sure, np with that.
Especially when it's a case of lazy student, RTFM or STFW.
Everyone needs to start the learning curve somewhere, but the forums should not be the first resort - if it's in the user manual or all over the web, perhaps a simple reply of &quot;Read your manual&quot; or &quot;Try asking google&quot; could make it clear. <marc>[ul]help us help!^{[li]please provide feedback on what works / doesn't[/li]
[li]not sure where to start? click here: faq581-3339[/li]}[/ul][/sup]

 

[dilettante]

Gee, and guess where Google sends folks these days? ;-)

There isn't any &quot;newb&quot; category because they weren't supposed to be here.

I also don't believe that being a master electrician entitles one to barge into a plumbers' guild hall and start asking simple questions either, but...

a. That analogy might be a stretch.

b. Just my two cents.

c. I seriously doubt that having a paper route makes one a journalism professional.

 

[lionelhill]

Actually I've been quite impressed by the level here since I turned up (from another site that practically collapsed under the weight of apathy and dull, go-nowhere questions).

(1) newbies.
Some of the best questions and discussions I've seen here (mostly in C, C++ etc forums) have been posed by self-confessed students, who have had a stab at their question, thought about it, posted code, and asked for specific help. I don't have any problems with a courteous learner.

(2) restriction to professionals
Hm, hard to define, and very hard to do (how can I give you proof my job has an IT content??). Unfortunately some people wandering around with certificates really know very little about the subject at all. And as someone else pointed out, being an expert in unix doesn't instantly make you an expert in photoshop. Many people who aren't paid a penny for their IT work nevertheless are very good at IT. Look at all the gifted amateurs who have brewed up chess programs for fun... I could learn quite a bit from any of them.

Also, lets face it, if a person can get paid well for being an expert, why on earth would they bother answering questions here? I think we have to accept that, while some people will be genuine experts writing because they're really nice people, others will be IT-knowledgeable semi-pros or amateurs filling in a spare moment over lunch. Provided the latter are friendly and don't fill the forum with junk, what's the problem?

Oh, and for interest: I am a non-computing biologist whose work nevertheless involves a lot of IT use (big data handling requirements etc), and who's written programs for data handling in the work environment, which I hope makes me a bona fide &quot;technical user&quot;; but virtually everything I know about computers has been from brewing up trivial games programs (etc) on the side, just for fun.

My tuppence worth: if a person is polite and asks an interesting question, I don't care who they are. If they are rude or ask something that isn't interesting to me, I just don't bother reading further...

 

[ethos]

Hey guys... what's a newbie? ETHOS. X-)
A woman once drove me to drink and computers...
and I never had the decency to thank her.
Ethos777@hotmail.com

 

[Kjonnnn]

Maybe this will get deleted, but original post sounded really arrogant.
&quot;The questions on this site are too easy for me.&quot;

Well I believe the site is here for people to network and find solutions to IT problems. I believe its the number 1 site on the net.

Those who have great experience problem have fewew questions, but because they can figure things out for thems. Those of us who were thrown into IT have questions ranging from easy to hard. So fortunately the experts have the time and desire to help the not so experts among us. Regardless of the level, we all learn from the questions and the answers. I do.

So if you have a difficult question, post it. If you can help someone, with a difficult question post the solution (since your so advanced). But its of the utmost egotistical arrogance to post... &quot;you guys don't post hard enough questions for me.&quot;

Maybe there should be a honors section for only most difficult complex problems.

 

[edfair]

Not arrogant. More truthful. This kind of parallels some other discussions covering the same subjects with some of the same conclusions.

The assumption is that a &quot;professional&quot; will have at least tried some other sources for solutions, will have looked at previous threads that cover the same subject, and will look in the FAQs for anything that applies. And if they have problems that they will give clear and concise descriptions of the details including hardware, OS, patch levels, and settings in the application that are creating the problem.

There are people making their living in IT that are clueless, and there are students that have a professional attitude. I believe that the consensus of the people that help the most would prefer a student with a professional attitude.
Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Kjonnnn]

but &quot;professional&quot; is a relative term. Some people are IT professionals because they knew a little their company decided to but 10 computers and WHAM ... he's the IT guy.

Coming from a different background, its sometimes even difficult to know what you should be studying to learn on your own if you've been thrown into a situation.

Maybe the site should only be fore &quot;professional&quot; who are at a particular experience and IT level ... and won't ask &quot;too easy&quot; &quot;dumb questions.&quot;

 

[manarth]

Personally, I don't have an issue with &quot;simple&quot; questions.
In fact, I like simple questions - they have simple answers

If someone asks a question which has an abvious answer in the user manual, then telling them to RTFM will have taught them something: i.e. next time, try reading it first.

Some people don't need to be told the answer, they need to be told where to look, so they can help themselves next time.

The only other questions I'm not too keen on are the ones where we can't help - e.g. &quot;My network isn't working&quot;
Well, yipee. Of course, the answer is either a) make it work; or b) don't run a network.

If someone is asking us for help in the wrong way, it doesn't necessarily hurt to point them in the right direction. If you like - have a read of the FAQ in my sig...feel free to link to it if you like what it says. If it get's rid of some of the silly questions - result! <marc>[ul]help us help![li]please provide feedback on what works / doesn't[/li][li]not sure where to start? click here: faq581-3339[/li][/sup][/ul][/sup]

 

[drdebit]

Manarth's point was exactly what confronted me when I signed up on the forum.
dilletante-I think your analogy is a stretch in this case because of the broad range of topics covered on this site. Someone could easily come to this site with some level of proficiency in one or two of the areas covered, and then-because they are using the site, see another forum-where they are the unsophisticated newcomer-as a resource when some kind of odd issue confronts them.
gg
you have the choices to participate in the web site and read and/or answer questions as you see fit. If you really dislike what's going on, you have the choice-as Michael Feldman suggests about radio shows, of starting your own website. I don't have time for others, I like the people here, and until I get run off, I'll stay here.
I have seen a major expert ask a &quot;trivial&quot; question simply as a timesaving resource. There is an &quot;it professional&quot; asking the basic questions you can't be bothered with because he's been dumped in situations of which he has no knowledge and he's learning as he goes.
Flip side-I came to one of the forums with what for me was an extremely critical(and difficult) need and got no help at all (it took me over a day coming back to the problem and google making guesses to find a solution) -and other questions that would have been helpful to me also remain unanswered. I even went to the extent of trying a second id for awhile on the theory that I might have offended someone-but i don't think that made much difference-users will answer or not as they see fit and you have exactly the same choice.
Different flip side-even though I'm not very knowledgeable, I have seen three or four questions on issues which I have spent hours and hours (and hours) struggling over and could give answers. It has been really disappointing to me not to see feedback to know if they were right solutions-but anyway-i think even rank novices can sometimes offer help as well as receive it.

 

[Tarwn]

I agree, professional is a relative term, but since we are here to share knowledge and experience, I would suspect that professional in this case doesn't mean you necessarally know more than anyone else in your company, but that you actually do know the subject to an intermediate degree.

I believe a lot of the &quot;too easy&quot; questions that are being commented on in this post are the questions that
a) Have been asked multiple times in at least the last few months, if not days
b) Have a subject that can be typed into google for over 1000 relevant hits (and many more not so relevant ones behind it)
c) Asked by a person that obviously doesn't have the knowledge required to begin the task
and possibly
d) Asked by a person that not only doesn't have the knowledge but depends on continuous posts to the forums in order to get their job done

As a side note, I do industrial software engineering for a living, am still ranked at the top of the ASP forum (a completely unrelated field), and have actually dropped to answering an average of about 10 questions a week for the past month or more. The reason for my drop? To many questions that appear way to frequently on a level that I consider below beginner or with an attitude that seems unprofessional.

Perhaps I will be told I am on a high horse again, but I expect any self-proclaimed professional (which is what we all are, due to the fact that there is no proof required) to be able to act professionally, spend a little time attempting to solve a problem themselves, and actually be more interested in the process of coming to the solution than getting free answers. I believe this also works in revese, a professional should not be worried wether someon will act professionally, whether there was actual research done ahead of time, or if the answer is exactly the answer to the users problem, as long as the process is show clearly.

Anyways, my change onthe stack,
-Tarwn _{01010100 01101001 01100101 01110010 01101110 01101111 01101011 00101110 01100011 01101111 01101101}
^{29 3K 10 3D 3L 3J 3K 10 32 35 10 3E 39 33 35 10 3K 3F 10 38 31 3M 35 10 36 3I 35 35 10 3K 39 3D 35 10 1Q 19}
Get better results for your questions: faq333-2924
Frequently Asked ASP Questions: faq333-3048

 

[drdebit]

One of the things that struck me while I was thinking about this thread is what a wonderful challenge and practice environment questions in these forums present to someone that wants to practice &quot;help desk&quot; skills.

Tarwn
Your post has a nice balance to it. I like it. (And - at least in many cases - there is also someone else to answer the too easy questions - or write a FAQ that folks can be pointed to.)

 

[cian]

If they are two easy here there's two things you could do:

1. Try some other threads which you are not so familiar with and might be more of a challenge
2. Try running against a brick wall head first to knock out some of that knowledge

They might be easy to you but are not easy to others. But it's good that they are so easy because then you should be able to help even more!
I find some of the questions very difficult, especially as I butt into forums I know nothing about such as the server side programming forums or the apache forum. In reality I know nothing about everything so can only offer a little bit of help to people who need it. ut you should be able to offer a lot of help to folks!!


É ::

http://www.endamcg.com

 

[lionelhill]

quite seriously, the only thing I don't like about this site is it's slightly over-professionalism... there is no forum for slightly fun things, a sort of equivalent of the &quot;coffee-time challenge&quot; feature you used to find at the end of computer magazines 20 years ago. Now they used to be quite stimulating, even to the super-brains.
Really what I mean is that limiting questions to serious, rate-of-achievement-limiting questions from real 100% IT managers and software engineers might actually create a very boring site. Questions like &quot;what's wrong with global variables?&quot; or &quot;why did my doubly-linked list blast me into segment-error-space?&quot; may not be things &quot;serious&quot; professionals ever ask, but they make for interesting discussions, and those who haven't the time or aren't interested don't have to follow that thread.

 

[CajunCenturion]

I think that one of the main benefits or goals of Tek-Tips is to promote an environment which allows for the sharing of information and technology between its members.

Yes, there are lots of easy questions, and just as Tarwn in the ASP forum does not take his time to answer the easy questions, neither do I in the VB forum. The reason is that those easy questions give some of the less experience members to provide an answer of their own.

I judge the professionalism of a member, not by the quality of the questions that they ask, but rather by what they contribute TO the fora. The professional recogonizes that Tek-Tips is based on give and take. Look at the individual profile see how many questions they ask, how many replies are made in other people's threads, and are they finding the site helpful. Besides the obvious language and overal behavior, its the profile that to me sheds the most light on a member's professionalism. Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[cian]

Good answer CC, I almost agree totally, i'd say I agree about 97%
Coupled with examining the member profile you'd of course need to judge the responses given by the member, quality not quantity etc
Guess that's nitpicking on my part, apologies

Totally agree with your second paragrpah though, if the experts answered all the questions then I wouldn't get to answer any and therefore would learn a lot less than I do. It's working through the problems with someone where the real learning takes place, not by just reading someone elses answer.

lionelhill I actually disagree that it's over professional. I also thought at one stage that a &quot;lounge&quot; area might be a good addition but the atmosphere here is very relaxed anyway. I have spent time on Experts Exchange but would put TT way ahead, mainly because you can share thoughts and information in a more relaxed atmosphere without getting any stuck-up attitudes (which I found to be common on EE).
Folks are friendlier round deez parts.

É ::

http://www.endamcg.com

 

[flyboytim]

I agree with Lionelhill regarding over-professionalism on the forum - a degree of stuffiness, some would call it. I guess that some of us who post here regard the forum as some sort of &quot;Masters Common Room&quot; and that the hoi-polloi are not really welcome.
I have just looked down the complete forum list, and there are some very esoteric forums, and some glaring omissions. There are javascript and VBscript forums, but nothing for experts to share their expertise in shell scripting, batch files, WSH and automation under Windows 2000 and XP, yet an advanced search on &quot;Batch&quot; brings up hundreds of postings. There is no forum to discuss these forums, to make suggestions and to discuss newsworthy items which affect us professionally, except perhaps for this one.
Still it is always fun to have Victor Meldrew, sorry, Guestgulkan, having a good moan at the rest of us for not living up to his standards.

 

[cian]

If you think there should be more forums then don't complain about it, suggest it to the forum manager!


É ::

http://www.endamcg.com

 

[skiflyer]

cian
This is the great thing about tek-tips in my opinion.

It's all voluntary, and the people who run it are open and accessible.

Questions are too easy... fine don't answer them... don't read them if you don't want to.

Not enough forums, suggest them, more are added daily!

Tough question... if asked properly I've seen very few questions go un-answered... even if the person posting has never contributed something useful to the rest of the forums.

I love the fact you can choose exactly your level of involvement, no strings attached, and that enough people still choose to participate willingly... combined with what to me seems to be a very helpful and involved administrative group... without the overhead and general clunkiness of a setup like EE.

-Rob

 

[BJCooperIT]

There have been occasions when I have read a post that requests help and I have thought &quot;This person does not have a clue and should be taking a beginners course before asking a question here.&quot; Sometimes a &quot;newbie&quot; question just is too much to address when they do not have a grasp of even the most basic concepts.

There have also been times when I have read a reply that made me feel like *I* do not have a clue. I strive to help when I can, learn when I can, and have my knowledge validated by other's responses. My frustration comes when I can do none of these. (select * from life where brain is not null)
Consultant/Custom Forms & PL/SQL - Oracle 8.1.7 - Windows 2000