Re: My little rant.....

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

Comment on Re: My little rant.....

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Re: Re: My little rant..... by gnu@perl (Pilgrim) on Jul 22, 2003 at 12:49 UTC
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.	[reply]

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Re: Re: My little rant.....
by gnu@perl (Pilgrim) on Jul 22, 2003 at 12:49 UTC

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.

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