I just gotta ask....

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Do the people who inhabit this forum really think they are doing someone a favor by doing the most basic of research for some of the people who post here asking for help?

Why not just advise those people how to search, and leave it up to them to do the search? All you do by giving people answers is create a dependency in them upon you, and they will have learned diddly-squat about helping themselves in the process. All they will do the next time they don't know something is come back and ask for an answer again, rather than have figured out how to find the answer themselves. IOW's they will remain completely ignorant as to how to help themselves.

It's far more genuinely caring, and ultimately a far more successful method by all objective standards, to take the time to feed somebody by teaching them to fish, rather than just tossing them a fish as you walk by.

One way creates a beggar. The other creates a self-sufficient person.

 

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We can't give away a tech's greatest secret now can we freddy?

 

I think most people who post asking for help only ask when they have no other option.

There are some though who ask questions repeatedly because they do not have the gumption to look on google, but I also think there are people who do not realise that research can be done for google.

 

good point Ken, but even if someone does a search and returns lots of results, eventuall they can find what they want.

 

I agree with the which cert is best point but if someone is asking questions like what is NetBUI then that could be easily googled.

 

If a guy doesn't even know what a fishing pole is and how to use it to catch fish, just handing him one isn't going to do him very much good.

I remember starting out on this trail a few years back and I asked the same questions on forums as any other newbie and many times, got the same sort of response..."look it up yourself". The problem was, I didn't know enough to figure out how to look up want I wanted and even when I found it, I didn't know enough to understand what I was looking at.

Eventually, I managed to gain sufficient knowledge to do most of my own research, but I still ask questions from time to time (see the General forum under Microsoft for my latest "newbie" thread). Sometimes it's not just the information a person is looking for but the perspective and experience in order to interpret that information and constructively organize it.

Granted, there will always be people who don't want to do any work for themselves, regardless of how much advice they've been given and I think we've seen that sort of behavior here from time to time. Eventually, that person's questions will get tiresome and the collective response of the forum ends up not being a response at all (unless ignoring someone is a response).

If a person is new and young (or young at heart), I will tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and try to help out when I can. You especially see this sort of behavior on Linux forums when even seasoned Windows people suddenly discover they have no clue about what's going on. Convincing people to adopt Linux on the desktop and in the server room is as much about being friendly and helpful as it is about showing how Linux will do a fabulous job in those areas. A lot of people have been turned off to Linux, not for technical reasons, but because they've been rebuffed by Linux gurus and veterans who've gotten tired of answering newbie questions and now just gruffly reply "RTFM".

CertForums is a very active discussion forum...more active than most, and represents quite a bit of talent among its members. One of the primary purposes here is to bring newbies in to the fold, so to speak, and teach them the ropes. Part of that teaching process is answering their beginning questions and teaching them what a fishing pole is, what a fish is, and why they want to catch some. Once they've got that part down, you shouldn't have to hold their hand very much unless they've managed to "hook a whopper" and need help reeling it in.

 

Good Explanation

 

Yo Trip - 11,000 and counting...

 

To all,

Notice that the implication of what I said is that only some people who post here ask just for answers. You will notice though, that it is pretty much always the same people asking for the same level of help too.

As to English being a second language for some.... If someone can post here and ask questions in English, they must be able to understand enough English to be able to use a search engine to find this place. Just how did they find this place, read here, and manage to post here asking questions if the above assumptions are not true?

This is not a way of putting people down for helping other people. If I were doing that, well, I'd be putting myself down for helping others, and I've done my fair share of helping people on this, and other, forums. That's not what this is about.

Here's an example of what I mean. Say you have a child born with a deformity. Oh, say one leg is a lot shorter than the other, enough to make it difficult for that child to learn to walk. Are you doing that child any favors by never allowing them to go through the difficulty of learning to walk just because it's harder for that child? If you constantly make sure that you compensate for that child's disability, will that child ever overcome that disability and grow beyond it? That's very doubtful, as that child will have learned that someone will always come along to do anything that they struggle with for them.

If, however, you take the time to give the child ideas as to how they can learn to conquer their handicap and encourage them to work at it you will have taught that child to learn to think, to solve problems, to overcome, and created a child with much more self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-respect. It's a lot harder during the time of need to do things that way. It takes a whole lot more time. But, who wants their child to grow up without that confidence in themselves that it takes to overcome the difficulties they will run into in their lifetime?

Giving results rather than giving an education in how to find results is doing that same thing. It's robbing that person of the ability to improve themselves, and create self-confidence in themselves. Notice that I'm not saying not to help, but to look at changing the type of help you give.

If each of you hadn't had to learn to help yourself, where you would be? Would you really rather be in the position of being dependent on others to do for you what you are now capable of doing for yourselves? Somehow, I really doubt it.

 

Oh good grief, I did it again. Biggest mouth on the forum.

 

Yes, you have just proven to the world that it is men who are blabber mouths not women. Thank you Trip!

P.S. Congrats on post you big blabber mouth.

 

The simple matter is, you can find pretty much anything on the internet, even answers to this very question im sure. So why didn't you just google it? Answer is because people's opinions and thoughts mean alot.

I do understand what you mean, alot of very basic stuff gets asked, I have been the offender of this before, im sure, but hasn't everybody at some point? I would rather ask a question here and have someone who I respect and admire answer the question, then take some random site's word for it.

Conclusion? I do see what you mean, and somewhat agree with it on certain levels, but not on the whole

 

I like to think that it is always helpfull, when I take time to reasearch for others. I did some research for wag one morning on a cert he was studying for. I know he knows how to google, but he is also a busy man and a new dad and I like to research stuff. Then there are the newbies, that don't know how to and usually for them I will put my google link with the ones that I think are best for their situation so they can see how I googled it. Then there are just those times that you can't fig out how to word something to find exactly what you are looking for. I've been there, so I like to help people that are having the same hard time too.

 

We all ask for help sometimes. I do it myself when I'm stumped, or completely ignorant about some subject. The people I'm referring to ask the same level of question again and again, on different subjects. IOW's, they are not learning to help themselves at all.

Most people on any forum will ask questions, especially the newbies, that seem kind of dumb sometimes(myself included), but if you kind of keep track of the types of questions a person asks over time you will see a progression, a growth, in the types of questions asked, and the depth of knowledge for which they are asking for help. The questions asked will not stay on the same level of ignorance about a subject or even the same level of ignorance about how find answers to any subject. That's most people. They are learning, and at the same time, learning how to help themselves. Those are not the people I'm referring to when I say we create cripples who depend on us rather than learning to help themselves. We do those people a huge wrong by allowing them to become dependent on us, rather than themselves.