Remember - there are very few situations where a given method is best for all possible scenarios. Ofttimes, I know I will say "Use method A, but do XYZ to it or use subset DEF" or whatever. Sometimes, the OP doesn't understand method A or has misnamed method B.

To sum up - don't worry about it. :-)

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

To sum up - don't worry about it.

Actually, I do think gnu@perl raises a valid point. It irks me too that there are so many postings that look like the poster is only interested in posting a reply as soon as possible - with any reply better than no reply. It then often looks like the replyer hasn't read the question, or perhaps has read the question, but a few keywords in the question just triggered a response. Is it the quest for XP - post as often as possible? Is it the short attention span people have nowadays.

On average, I only spend a few votes a day, but I vote -- much more than ++. Responses that look like the replyer didn't bother reading or understanding the question make up a fair share. Such postings are as irksome as questions where the asker of the question doesn't show any initiative. Most of us want a person asking a question to have read the documentation, and/or made an attempt to solve the problem. If we ask that from a person asking a question, is it too much to ask for a replyer to have read and understood the question?

Last week, a question was asked "What is the best way to add feature XXX to my to be written program", to which I replied that he was too early in the design phase to answer that, including explainations of why it was too early. Someone else had to critisize me for not pointing to various modules that might do that (without taking himself the trouble of listing them). That someone had clearly not read the entire question, because the question wasn't a quantitative one, but a qualitative one.

I bet the S/N ratio would increase if people replying to postings fully read the questions. But he, as long as the people voting don't read them as well, and vote ++ for useless answers, they'll stay.

Abigail

abigail-ii I think you are talking about Flat File Fun (or You Just Saved My Class) above. I did read the node, and I gave a link to Data::Dumper for one of the possible ways to store his data. Unlike you I assume the OP was not really asking what module he should use and take the first one that was posted but maybe a list of modules that could be used. I read (and still do) his question as a fact finding question to see what modules others would use to serialize his data.

Your responce says This is not an easy question to answer. No doubt, you'll see quick posts saying "use Date::Dumper", "use YAML" or some other serialization technique. But then what. So you decide the pick YAML, what's next? That's the wrong time to start asking questions. First you have to know, what is that data I need to save? Why am I saving? Is it for persistence, ... You assume the OP is going to jump on in and use Data::Dumper to serialize based on my post, then after long hours of work have a light turn on and question how he is doing it. -- I assume he is going to read the docs and see if it fits his needs (esp since he does not fully describe his structure), hell he may even have a brain and consider looking at all the options posted and chose one that fits his needs or modify the way his data is formed to make it easier to scope out the dump to disk. Just because you read a question one way does not mean the other guy answering questions or tossing info out there does not read the question.

-Waswas

If it is any consolation, you are more likely to get someone reading the post here than on slashdot...

Let's also be honest with ourselves. There is a bit of karma/XP whoring going on in certain threads. Consider that it is a joked about condition of the community and it's advancement structure.

Because of that way the voting system rewards you for actually voting and the fact that the first post(that looks technically correct) will most likely get the most votes when people are trying to spend all their daily vote allotments, you can see that some participants may RACE to post their thoughts without reading an entire post just to be first. I've seen posts that were completely off-topic and I've even seen posts that were completely struck-through with comments like, "didn't read entire post".

Now I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I bring this up because I notice no one else has mentioned it thus far and I think it does play a role in some of the inaccurate responses out there. But one should keep in mind that it's the rabid participation that drives this community and makes it 100 times better than any similar place on the internet. And honestly, haven't all of us done this once or twice in our participation here?

Let he who is without sin...

Which could be partially addressed by taking most or all of the XP gain out of voting.

I often see multiple posts from someone, decide based on them that he is clueless, then go to his user info only to find that his experience level exceeds mine, for far fewer posts. This is not to say I'm a genius of some sort - I've had some very clue-challenged moments myself - but rewarding voting so heavily is definitely distorting things.

I'll admit to having posted faster than is good to try and get a few votes. I'm not sure of the cure for that, other than self-discipline and humility, both of which I lack.

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com

The problem is not with the XP system so much as with value you assign to it. XP is in no way a rating of expertise, knowledge or anything else of any consequence. It is, mostly, a measure of how much a user has contributed to this site - and voting certainly is contribution.

Besides, I don't know if you realize how little XP the "heavily rewarded" voting really gains you. Even a saint, who gets 40 votes a day, can at best gain 10XP/day from spending all his votes consistently. 10XP is nothing. Three short stock replies to simple beginner questions on SoPW will easily get you as much if they're even barely correct.

Makeshifts last the longest.

That's the point. I do post what I did and why I don't want to do that or it didn't work. If someone were to say "I have done this quite a bit before and Method a you mentioned has always worked much better than..... because....", that would be great. But for a poster to just put "I use method a", or even "you should use method b" with no supporting information is of no use to anyone.

I am not condeming anyone, I'm sure if one were to go back through some of my posts they would find some pretty stupid things I have written. I just think that if you are going to post it should be beneficial to the readers. So if one were to say "I use method a", it should be followed up with their reason / opinion why that method has worked for them. Other readers (or even the poster) may not inherently know why they did what they did.

Sorry I was just pulling your leg. Couldn't help myself. :)

I apologize. I try and provide something useful after the fact. I try. What can/are you going to do about it besides vent. Venting is healthy and maybe people will try harder for a while. Realistically though, we are creatures of habit. We do not waste enough time on each other - thanks Petruchio.

Take for instance this node. The OP asked two questions - help me understand closures better and specifically explain what's happening in this code step by step. There is a mini flame war because merlyn doesn't bother to answer the second part of the question. I assume his rationale is it would not be required after reading one of his many articles. You can hate merlyn or like him: it doesn't matter. What we get here is free. Have you seen how many people swear their undying allegiance to the Monastery with promises of financial gifts and compare it to the Offering Plate? You don't always get what you ask for and the quality of what you do get varies.

This doesn't nullify the fact that way more often than not, you get an oustanding answer. So what if you have to weed through a few that don't meet your expectations.

You get what you pay for doesn't apply here. You can a thousand more than you pay for. I understand the need to vent, so now that you have done so be sure to raise the quality of the site by wasting time on your fellow monks.

Yeah, my little nephew is also eager to assist, even when it's not helpful. But I forgive him, he's only four.

From adults, I'd expect to know that not helping is usually better than helping if you are unfamiliar with it. Or at least put up some flashy lights.

One should realize that each bad answer to a question decreases the value of "Super Search", because a search engine doesn't distinguish between good and bad posts, and what's worse, the user of "Super Search" often can't either.

Abigail

Abigail,
Thank you for understanding my point. It was not my intention to belittle or berate people for posting in this fashion. My intent was to start a discussion on what I consider to be 'trivial' replies to posts.

By 'trivial' I mean posts that offer no real tangable assistance. Again if I post 'I've tried XXX and it dosen't work as well as I would like, are there other ways?' and someone replies simply 'Use XXX' that is of no assistance and lowers the value of that whole thread to someone who may not fully understand the topic.

If one were to reply "Use XXX. In my experiance using XXX versus YYY and ZZZ I have found that ......", this would be much more helpfull even though it proposed the same solution I had posted.

Also, I do not believe, in general, that the persons posting the 'redundant' information are doing it strictly for XP, but it is basic human nature to want to add your two cents and be heard. As anyone can see, my XP is not very high as that is not a concern of mine. I, like you, attempt to refrain from posting unless I have solid information that may add to the total information of the thread.

On the bright side, honest, albeit "useless," replies are still better than trash-talking, which plagues many other areas in the Internet.

As for the XP's side-effects, the XP system does help engage people. Perhaps some people might have gotten engaged too much to the extent of being like an obsessive gamer. But that's a tradeoff and compromise inherited by any reward and compensation system. The design concern is whether you encourage too much more competition than cooperation in a team or community.

I don't feel competition exceeds cooperation here, partly thanks to a well-balanced core group of monks.

Regarding "junk" posts, I would rather tolerate them than discourage them, because once you try to discourage "junk" posts, you vastly discourage the free flow of ideas.

Tolerating different ideas is one of the most important corner stones for technological and intellectual advancement. Granted, some ideas are pure trash but I consider tolerating their existence as a small price to pay for the greater good of the overall progress of the community.

Although the original discussion has been some people not reading a post before replying, some people might have actually read the post but replied as if they hadn't. But every community always has new blood and rookies, who might not offer what considered quality replies. We "tolerate" them not just for the sack of humanity or whatever but for the sake that some of them might become great and actually helpful in the future.

Everyone need to practise and to be taught, during which time he might produce some junk along the way. That's just a natural growth process.

How much you can achieve in life matters more than how much you score on some electronic bulletin board. How much "junk" ideas you can tolerate and how many such "junk" senders you can foster into helpful ones define your own true greatness and the future well-being of a community.

Shared community means you share everything good and bad. So, relax and smell your coffee.

Does anyone know of a better or different way to do this?
I guess all I am asking is that people READ the post and not post redundant information.