Forum etiquettte?

[dsaba]

I have a bunch of open ended questions that I think we should debate about here on phpfreaks and on the help genre of forums. Feel free to answer all or some of these questions, and of course explain the reasoning behind your answer. Try to be as realistic as possible.

ie: Idealists who say those who are helped here should show their gratitude would argue that the helped should make a donation to phpfreaks. The reality is that not everyone will do this and yet still receive their help and still want to show their gratitude. What are they to do?

 

The questions:

• Someone has helped you with your problem. You appreciate it. You want to show your gratitude. What do you do?
  
• Is simply saying "thank you" as the last post in your thread acceptable behavior in showing gratitude? Think about how this will bump the thread and add no useful information to the already solved thread. If it is acceptable, within what time frame can you do it. Consider the effect of bumping an older thread. Does it even matter that much?
  
• You have taken time to write a well-explained problem and background information to it. Numerous people have replied with "bad help" and advice that are ignorant to the original problem. What do you do? Think about the role moderators have, if they should be made aware by reports of this or what not... Think about the time and effort a possible "bad helper" has put into delivering his bad help. Think about spam, and how it might apply here.
  
• Can you think of how forum etiquette can get in the way of true analysis of information and conversation/communication of information? If to learn and gain knowledge is one of the purposes of this forum, how can forum etiquette get in the way of this? Where does the line draw? Who will decide if a disagreement is an argument of useless spamming or a bridge to build information and increase knowledge?
  
• Isn't gratitude overrated? Don't those who help have more desire to help than to receive gratitude or recognition for their help? The reality is that in your career as a a helper you will most often not receive the gratitude your deserve.
  

 

[.josh]

• Someone has helped you with your problem. You appreciate it. You want to show your gratitude. What do you do?

 

- You can make a donation here.

- You can read other posts and help people with their problems.

- You can say thank you.

 

• Is simply saying "thank you" as the last post in your thread acceptable behavior in showing gratitude? Think about how this will bump the thread and add no useful information to the already solved thread. If it is acceptable, within what time frame can you do it. Consider the effect of bumping an older thread. Does it even matter that much?

 

Simply saying thank you has always been cool with us.  We have a "Topic Solved" button on the bottom left of the thread for you to click so that the thread will show that the problem was solved.  But a lot of people don't know about it, so mods are able to mark it for them if their last post informs us that it was solved.

 

As far as I know, we do not enforce any kind of time limit.  Ideally people should be able to search the forums for threads that may have the same or similar problems as them, and ideally, the solved threads should be more helpful.  Since SMF's search function does not at this time include only searching for solved threads, threads that are "bumped" because of a thank you post can potentially serve to one's advantage. 

 

Writing this response, I just thought of an alternative option.  Perhaps we could have a "Solved" forum, where threads marked as "solved" can reside.  The pro to this would be that in the advanced search, you can specify a forum to search in.  Since the forum would only have topics marked as solved..well, there you have it: a work-around to not having a current feature for that.  The con to this would be that manually searching through solved topics by navigating through the board could be tedious, since they wouldn't be categorized.  We could solve this by making a bunch of subforums, 1 for each of the main forums.  Or we could make a subforum inside each of the main forums.  I think I will bring this up for discussion with the other mods/admin.

 

• You have taken time to write a well-explained problem and background information to it. Numerous people have replied with "bad help" and advice that are ignorant to the original problem. What do you do? Think about the role moderators have, if they should be made aware by reports of this or what not... Think about the time and effort a possible "bad helper" has put into delivering his bad help. Think about spam, and how it might apply here.

 

Yes, someone has taken the time to research their problem first.  Yes, someone has taken the time to write their problem as clear as possible, providing relevant code, etc.. so do they deserve a straight and informed answer?  Well, first and foremost, nobody here gets paid to help.  None of the "staff" gets any kind of portion of ad revenue if we have ads, or any kind of portion of donations given; nothing.  That money goes straight towards helping pay for hosting, and as far as I know, we do not get enough money from donations to fully pay for hosting. 

 

Since nobody gets paid for any of this, we do not really try to discipline people who are just trying to help, no matter how "bad" that help may be.  I personally like to think of those posts as "here's what doesn't work" posts.  Even those posts can be helpful, if you think about it.  Knowing what doesn't work can be a tremendous help in narrowing down and fixing the problem, especially when dealing with logic problems, which are the hardest problems to fix. 

 

Countless times I have seen other people say "no that's not right, but that did get me on the right track and here's the solution." I've heard that from other helpers and original posters alike.  Seems that 9/10 times there will always be someone who comes in after a "bad advice" post to correct it.  In my experience, the real problem with "bad advice" posts is how those 'correctors' respond to the bad advice.  9/10 times, those are the people we have to ask to be nice. 

 

If it's straight up "spam," we usually straight up delete it. 

 

• Can you think of how forum etiquette can get in the way of true analysis of information and conversation/communication of information? If to learn and gain knowledge is one of the purposes of this forum, how can forum etiquette get in the way of this? Where does the line draw? Who will decide if a disagreement is an argument of useless spamming or a bridge to build information and increase knowledge?

 

There is a board I [used to] frequent where a bunch of "smart" people (Engineers, rocket scientists, doctors, physicists, etc...) hang out to discuss philosophy, religion and politics.  I stopped hanging out there mostly because the context was way the frack above my level of understanding, but also because debates would almost certainly always degenerate into a game of semantics, entirely missing the point of the debate.  Each response would literally be a 2,000 word essay full of quotes for every single sentence by the previous poster (yes, this is where I got my long-windedness, Dan I went there to maybe soak in some of that IQ but just walked away with their worst habits, lol ).  And not to be out-done by that, the response would be a full blown book.  I'm serious. 

 

This isn't a "smart people" hangout.  We are a support forum.  In the spirit of trying to learn and solve problems, we tend to let an awful lot slide.  Bad spelling, bad grammar, lack of clarity, etc.. are always obstacles to getting the problem solved, but we do not delete posts because of any of those things, but neither do we shy away from telling people they need to be more clear. 

 

Most people do, in fact, feel they are being clear enough when they make their posts, so unless it is pretty obvious that they are spamming, trolling, or just being lazy (like asking people to write their code for them, etc..), we generally try to tell them they need to better explain their problem, provide more information, etc.. After all, the goal is to solve the problem. 

 

 

As far as debate vs. flame war: it's actually pretty easy to tell whether conversation is centered around debate or if it's some kind of flame war or useless spam.  It's mostly a matter of common sense.  However, if we do have doubts, we do ask the other mods/admin their thoughts on the matter.  But even then, we are pretty lenient on that stuff.  Remember, nobody gets paid for it, so keeping some fun in the atmosphere is a good thing for keeping people around. 

 

• Isn't gratitude overrated? Don't those who help have more desire to help than to receive gratitude or recognition for their help? The reality is that in your career as a a helper you will most often not receive the gratitude your deserve.
  

 

I totally agree with this.  To be honest, as a moderator (but more importantly, someone who tries to help) I don't really care so much for the thank you as a pat on the back.  My main desire to see the proverbial thank you is so I know that the problem is solved.  Since we do not have direct access to the scripts or the environment they are being used in, a lot of our "job" is...well, I wouldn't exactly say "guess" work, but there are a ton of things that could be wrong with something, or there could just be that one thing we suggested. 

 

I can't officially speak for others who help, but I get a sense of accomplishment when I see that "thank you" or "topic solved" button hit.  There was a problem, and I [helped] fix it.  It makes me feel more confident of my skills, being able to help fix problems, when I do not know the whole situation.  The more I help people out here, the more I feel my skills as a programmer grows.  The best teacher is experience, as they say.  That's my real reward.  "Thank you's" are just a signal of "job done," not "job well done."  Not that I don't appreciate it.  I'm just sayin'... lol.

[GingerRobot]

• Can you think of how forum etiquette can get in the way of true analysis of information and conversation/communication of information? If to learn and gain knowledge is one of the purposes of this forum, how can forum etiquette get in the way of this? Where does the line draw? Who will decide if a disagreement is an argument of useless spamming or a bridge to build information and increase knowledge?

 

IMO, a certain level of forum etiquette is required for helping to occur. If a post is too difficult to understand due to poor posting habits, how can one expect to either help or be helped? Furthermore, poor forum etiquette can prevent others from being helped. For example, posting in a wrong forum means mods/admins have to spend time moving said posts rather than people able to help someone.

 

• Isn't gratitude overrated? Don't those who help have more desire to help than to receive gratitude or recognition for their help? The reality is that in your career as a a helper you will most often not receive the gratitude your deserve.
  

 

I've said before with this kind of question that i personally believe there's no such thing as altruism. Nobody does anything that will help somebody else without gaining something from it themselves. As you've said, not everybody says thank you. Therefore, the helper must be gaining something else other than the 'satisfaction' of having someone tell them that they've been helpful. The most obvious one is that most people don't require a thank you to know that they might have helped. They therefore gain something because, regardless of any thank you, they know they have helped someone. As CV mentioned, there is also the gain that comes with explaining something. Until you can explain a concept to someone else, i would say you havn't fully understood that concept. By helping someone, you can proove to youself that you have fully understood something. By helping you also expose yourself to other ideas and problems which you may not otherwise have encountered. Hell, I may spend some time helping as i'm bored. My reward is therefore an aleviation of this boredom.

[effigy]

• Someone has helped you with your problem. You appreciate it. You want to show your gratitude. What do you do?

 

At the very least, confirm that the solution did in fact work. Leaving the thread as is may be ambiguous to others, i.e., "Well did it work or not?"

 

• Is simply saying "thank you" as the last post in your thread acceptable behavior in showing gratitude? Think about how this will bump the thread and add no useful information to the already solved thread. If it is acceptable, within what time frame can you do it. Consider the effect of bumping an older thread. Does it even matter that much?

 

This should be acceptable since it affirms the above; although, the more details the better, e.g. "It worked, but I had to..." or "Here's how I implemented this...." I would say respond any time it's appropriate. People get busy, projects change, etc.

 

• You have taken time to write a well-explained problem and background information to it. Numerous people have replied with "bad help" and advice that are ignorant to the original problem. What do you do? Think about the role moderators have, if they should be made aware by reports of this or what not... Think about the time and effort a possible "bad helper" has put into delivering his bad help. Think about spam, and how it might apply here.

 

If their advice is subpar, say so in a reply.

 

• Can you think of how forum etiquette can get in the way of true analysis of information and conversation/communication of information? If to learn and gain knowledge is one of the purposes of this forum, how can forum etiquette get in the way of this? Where does the line draw? Who will decide if a disagreement is an argument of useless spamming or a bridge to build information and increase knowledge?

 

I think there are enough reasonable human beings around to discern a fruitful debate from a pointless argument. It's all in how the context and language are handled.

 

• Isn't gratitude overrated? Don't those who help have more desire to help than to receive gratitude or recognition for their help? The reality is that in your career as a a helper you will most often not receive the gratitude your deserve.

 

But are they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they are regarded at all? -- Thoreau

[448191]

Etiquette schmetiquette...

 

Just some basic decency should be enough.

[Wolphie]

Etiquette schmetiquette...

 

Just some basic decency should be enough.

 

Agreed. It just goes to show how a long and detailed explanation could be out weighed by a short and simple answer. I personally feel a sense of accomplishment also, and try to help as much as I can even when I don't fully understand the code, the explanation, the desired result etc..