You get "nice guy" credit for helping others learn which enhances your reputation. You get little "experience points" and so forth. Are these things worth your time? If so, then answer. If not, then don't. This is an incredibly simple issue.

To be fair, I'm not sure that that is something that some people may look at as a strong incentive for answering questions. As near as I can tell, those points aren't really public information (I could be wrong, I still need to explore more). As something relative, on one of my home forums, I possess roughly 6388 messages under my name for little over two years there. Does the fact I wrote more than 6388 posts there mean anything? To me, personally, it doesn't mean much, probably that I just write a lot of junk. Do other prople perceive me in some fashion based on my message count? You bet.

To me, the real incentive is to be a part of a data mine. Nothing pisses me off more than spending hours searching the web for some very difficult to solve problem where the only answers I can find involves something like this:

Seeker: I have a problem with hardware X causing a crash in software Y when I do Z. Anyone know of a fix?
Mentor: Have you tried to do A then B then C?
Seeker: Yeah, but that doesn't work.
Mentor: I know the answer, try doing D and see if that works.
Seeker: That doesn't work either, but I finally figured out the problem. Thanks for your help guys!
Me: WTF?!? What did you do to fix the problem? I've got the same exact problem! Hey! Come back! Please?

My ultimate goal is to ensure that never happens. If I have an answer for something I know works and/or is correct. I put it up everywhere I can and crosslink it as much as possible. But I still belong in the camp that we shouldn't do other peoples homework for them though.

Sigh... I'll never be wealthy. Will I?

In reply to Re: Re: Is this the right way to learn? by SavannahLion
in thread Is this the right way to learn? by pg

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