Re: To Answer, Or Not To Answer....

To those advocating to hold your tongue if you don't know the answer to a certainty, a pox. Seriously, my questions receive so few answers, and the answers I do get are incorrect so often (not necessarily usual, but often) that anyone advocating a reduction is doing everyone a disservice. Often an incorrect or incomplete answer gives me enough to go on to make progress or outright solve the issue.

What you have to offer may not be complete or correct. But it may provide another way of thinking that helps someone who reads it. It may be corrected by others, which, in turn, helps both you and the original poster. And it may actually be complete and correct.

If you're unsure, say so. There's no shame in learning, and no shame in not understanding fully. Simply be truthful. "I'm not sure, but my understanding is..." There are plenty of monks more than happy to correct your understanding if it is incomplete.

What I've found is that the fastest way to learn something is to teach it. This is not the other way around. It is not that you need to learn something to teach it, it's that you need to teach it to learn it. I "taught" C++ and STL to fellow students in university. Not a course, but to help teammates on our projects. After sleeping through my Digital Signal Processing course, I practically taught it to fellow students in the days leading up to the exam - they attributed mere passing to my teaching, I attributed my 8 (on a Stanine scale - "A-") to teaching them, and having to deal with all of their questions, not just my own. And that's what this site is for - I was "pretty good" at perl when I joined in 2005. I think I'm "much better" now (feel free to form your own opinion, I'm sure others have :-> ). I ask questions when I'm at an impasse. I answer questions to hone up and reinforce it.

Please. You'll be glad you did. :-)

Fair warning, though. Poxed monks may give you --'s when you get it wrong. You might lose a few XP here and there. Don't sweat it. Er... I mean, don't sweat it. :-S The XP you gain will more than outweigh it, especially over time. And it'll be a shorter time if you involve yourself than if you don't.

Update: clarification italicised above, as it seems chromatic may have taken it too literally.

Comment on Re: To Answer, Or Not To Answer....

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Re^2: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jul 30, 2011 at 00:28 UTC
To those advocating to hold your tongue if you don't know the answer, a pox. Goodness, no. Just about the last thing a novice needs is to be buried in an avalanche of conflicting responses with no way to judge what's correct just because people feel like it's okay to guess at answers. I can talk a good game about the internals, but when someone like Dave Mitchell posts, believe him and not me. Now tell me how a novice is supposed to know to believe him over me?	[reply]
Re^3: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by Tanktalus (Canon) on Jul 30, 2011 at 03:08 UTC
Updated original node just slightly. Although I'm not sure that your opposition changes anything. After all, we already get monks responding with bad and/or incorrect and/or incomplete responses. We get monks asking bad and/or incorrect and/or incomplete questions. (Incorrect questions? Sure. Think XY Problem.) Waiting for perfect questions and perfect answers is just not going to work. Sometimes that incomplete question needs answers requesting clarification. Sometimes incomplete answers provoke more complete answers that may not have come if it weren't for needing someone to correct. How is a novice supposed to know who to believe as it is? We have nothing but the meaningless XP to gauge how helpful someone is/has been. Of course, by that alone, novices may already believe you over me (probably good), and either one of us over TimToady (probably not so good). If they ignore the XP, perhaps they'll look at the actual text and evaluate for themselves. Will they try a few wrong things? Sure. That's not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is probably having your thread completely ignored instead of resurrected by a wrong response. Perhaps that's merely my take on the subject. I generally prefer answers that might lead me somewhere than silence. The answers might be rough, but perhaps someone else will come along and polish it into a fine diamond. Or maybe it'll remain a turd, but at least the Mythbusters have proven that you can, indeed, polish a turd.	[reply]
Re^4: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jul 30, 2011 at 08:37 UTC
Waiting for perfect questions and perfect answers is just not going to work. Which part of my post suggests that I would ever believe such a silly idea? ... we already get monks responding with bad and/or incorrect and/or incomplete responses... Some 80% of the time I hold my metaphorical tongue because I can't figure out a polite way to say "Please don't post blind guesses without at least testing them; it's very rude to waste everyone's time." The other 20% I manage to respond with what I believe to be at least some degree of gentleness. That's not the worst thing that can happen. Read the comments on php.net sometime. Someone without the experience (or good fortune) to judge nonsense from veracity could suffer a lot of damage. This is nothing I want to promote with Perl.	[reply]
Re^4: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by Anonymous Monk on Jul 30, 2011 at 03:16 UTC
Indeed. It helps to remember we're humans, not robots, and we're having a conversation :)	[reply]
Re^3: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by Anonymous Monk on Jul 30, 2011 at 01:02 UTC
Now tell me how a novice is supposed to know to believe him over me? If you preface your post, explain that you're not an expert, that you're just guessing -- makes it easier to judge whom to believe	[reply]
Re^4: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by JavaFan (Canon) on Jul 30, 2011 at 10:15 UTC
Unfortunally, 99% of the bullshit answers given here on Perlmonks (and believe, tons of answers here are just bullshit), don't have such a disclaimer.	[reply]
Re^5: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by Anonymous Monk on Aug 02, 2011 at 02:24 UTC
Re^6: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by JavaFan (Canon) on Aug 02, 2011 at 05:39 UTC
Re^3: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by jffry (Hermit) on Aug 02, 2011 at 17:24 UTC
Now tell me how a novice is supposed to know to believe him over me? Make node reputation visible to everyone at all times even before they vote. That is one reasonable way to solve this problem.	[reply]
Re^4: To Answer, Or Not To Answer.... by chromatic (Archbishop) on Aug 02, 2011 at 17:59 UTC
That might help in some ways, but I suspect that scores depend on many more factors than mere accuracy: time of day, existing reputation of poster, tone, chronology of responses, et cetera. It's difficult to draw a useful correlation.	[reply]