I do not mean to gripe about this too much but perhaps, if other people feel this way, then there is something fundamentally wrong with these forums. Combing through my post history, I see roughly 7 threads where I was looking for help and received it and maybe 18 threads where I was looking for help and recieved either no response at all or very poor ones which I could only chalk up to the respondents not having actually read what I was asking all the way through. Now granted, there is probably some exaggeration here because I'm frustrated, and almost certainly some of my long-time-ago questions were stupid questions and deserved stupid answers but the numbers are still not good. I generally try to write clear, well-worded posts asking for specific help on specific issues (I think my most recent post was simple and to the point in what it was asking)and I KNOW there are talented people on these forums, yet almost 1/3 of the time I get no response worth speaking of.

Whats going on here? Is it really that there aren't enough generous, knowledgable people to go around? Is it that posts get pushed off the front page too quickly? Does anyone else feel like this is an issue?

First of all, thanks for trying to make this forum a better one!

 

If I understand your complaint properly, it is that two thirds of the time you get a free answer from these forums? 

 

Here are some statistics that might help put things in perspective.  I've been a moderator less than one week.  In that week, I have moderated four hundred seventy four posts.   I'm just one of many moderators, so that means there are a lot of posts out there.

Here's another statistic, from the bottom of the forums page:

In the past 24 hours, we have 513 new thread(s), 2,385 new post(s), and 220 new user(s).

 

If you truly want a higher ration of answers to questions, the best advice I can give you is to answer lots of other people's questions, and get your friends to do so also.  That way, the people who can answer your question aren't busy answering someone else's.  Plus, as people recognize how much you help others, your questions go to the top of their list.   It worked for me.

A huge percentage of the threads start off without the most basic information required to provide an answer.  Even if you don't know the answer, I bet you know what information is missing (language(s) involved, toolkit, asp.net version, posted code, error messages, etc.)  Just asking people to supply the apparently not obvious would take a real load off of those who could answer your question.

 

 

 

Regrading my complaint - yes, that is it...sort of. See, I know that trolling forums for answers is unreliable, so I generally post to here only after doing research and failing to find what I need, this ensures that at a bear minimum I know what I'm asking before I try to ask it. I suspect that the users of the forum are broken up pretty neatly along the lines of those who reach for the book or the keyboard first. In the case of the book people you then have a slightly more nuanced situation, you have people who are comming here generally frustrated and with their other sources exhausted, they type up a thought out post on a specific issue. And then, before one of you knowlegable sages gets around to it, their post is pushed right off the front page by a flood of what is frequently nonsense. Of course this is by far worse in the Getting Started forum, but somehow any other forum I post in tends to have an even worse answer ratio - my guess is no one visits them.
How about instituting an elitist system to seperate the beginners from the intermeds from the experts. You need 50 points to have access to the novice forums, 500 to the expert forums. That would also give me reason to try to acquire points other than seeing a thread I might find interesting while I'm waiting for my question to get a turn in line.

togakangaroo:

How about instituting an elitist system to seperate the beginners from the intermeds from the experts. You need 50 points to have access to the novice forums, 500 to the expert forums. That would also give me reason to try to acquire points other than seeing a thread I might find interesting while I'm waiting for my question to get a turn in line.

I don't understand your idea.  I don't care how many points someone has if they have an answer to my question, so how would preventing low-point members form answering help get your questions answered more quickly?
 

togakangaroo:

(I think my most recent post was simple and to the point in what it was asking)

 

Out of curiosity, I looked up your post.

You are right.  It is simple and to the point.

It is also about Windows Forms, and this is not a Windows Forms forum.  It's for web-based technology.  That post was in the wrong website!

If you are asking Windows Forms questions on this forum and getting an answer 2/3rds of the time, you have no cause for complaint at all!  Count yourself lucky!

 

 

togakangaroo:

I think my most recent post was simple and to the point in what it was asking

 

This forum is for ASP.NET.  Windows forms questions should be posted to http://windowsclient.net/WFForums/.  Picking the right forum for your question can sometimes pay dividends.

so what you're saying is I need to 'post' in a forum on the 'right subject' in order to get 'answers' in that 'subject'? Sheesh, you guys are so demanding.

togakangaroo:

so what you're saying is I need to 'post' in a forum on the 'right subject' in order to get 'answers' in that 'subject'? Sheesh, you guys are so demanding.

I'm guessing you forgot to put a at the end of your last post.

But for the benefit of those who didn't realize that, I'll explain why.

No one, when reading a forum thread, says to themselves, "I know the answer to this question, but the poster put it in the wrong forum, so I won't answer it."

That would be absurd and no one does that!

If I posted Microsoft ASP.Net questions on Sun's Java forums, I'm not likely to get an answer.  Why?  Because people who program in java don't usually program in Microsoft ASP.Net!   It's not that they don't want to help me, it's that they don't know how.

Same thing here!  Many people who program in ASP.Net don't do windows programming.  If you post a question here, fewer people will be able to help you.

The same thing goes for putting the questions into the right forum within this site.  People who are expert in doing custom controls, and who have limited time to help, will read the forum dealing with custom controls to look for questions to answer.  They don't have time to read every new post on this site to find the ones about custom controls put into the sql server forum.

 

togakangaroo:

so what you're saying is I need to 'post' in a forum on the 'right subject' in order to get 'answers' in that 'subject'?

 

What I'm saying is that you stand a much better chance of getting an answer if you submit your question to the appropriate forum for your subject matter.  If it's ASP.NET, that's here.  If windows forms, then I've already posted a link.  If it's about vehicle mechanics, there are bound to be dedicated forums for the model you want.

You might be lucky enough that a winclient-savvy person stumbles across your post here, but you can eliminate the luck factor by posting somewhere where those people hang out. That's why each subject usually has a dedicated forum or newsgroup.  Otherwise where would you draw the line?

 

david wendelken:

togakangaroo:

How about instituting an elitist system to seperate the beginners from the intermeds from the experts. You need 50 points to have access to the novice forums, 500 to the expert forums. That would also give me reason to try to acquire points other than seeing a thread I might find interesting while I'm waiting for my question to get a turn in line.

I don't understand your idea.  I don't care how many points someone has if they have an answer to my question, so how would preventing low-point members form answering help get your questions answered more quickly?
 

The idea is that someone would not be able to create a new thread on a forum which they are not elite enough to access not that they wouldn't be able to view or respond to threads. My belief - and this is purely postulization, I don't have any evidence - is that this would segregate discussions by rough skill/experience levels.
So suppose that there's three tiers as I mentioned before - The regular forum, the intermediate forum for those with 50+ points, and the advanced forum for those with 500+.
The idea is that those people with posting priveledges in the intermediate forum would have been around for at least a little while and be familiar with the questions that get asked all the time, the question format that works best, which sub-forum they can expect to get the best discussion in, etc. So on the intermediate teir, everyone can still respond but only people meeting the 50 point bar can create threads so the questions will be of a higher quality and ideally would avoid the how-do-I-hello-world type questions. People hanging out in the advanced tier would have an advanced knowledge of the forums and an advanced understanding of .NET, a thread on this teir would likely be interesting to other advanced programmers and will likely get quality responses from them. You can also use the points system to keep the experts from segregating themselves entirely from the rest of the community - design it so that you get more points for distributing your responses evenly across the tiers.

Actually there's one quick way to impelent this that I can think of right now. Simply make 3 visible buttons at the top of each forum - button one would make all threads visible, button 2 would filter out all threads started by someone with less than 50 points, button 3 would ... well you get it.

Anyways, take it or leave it, that's just the type of system I was talking about.

togakangaroo:

The idea is that someone would not be able to create a new thread on a forum which they are not elite enough to access

 

I'm not sure what problem you see this resolving, but I do think you have a fatally flawed view of the points system.  There are plenty of members with well in excess of 500 points who still ask basic questions, and equally, I have seen lots of questions posted by sub-10 point posters which are very advanced.  It's just that those posters turn to the forum as a last resort, which isn't often. 

 

Oh I understand that there are idiots and geniuses at every experience level, but I would be very surprised if the overall trend is not that more points correlates to a better knowlege of ASP.NET.

As to what the benefits of such a system might be well I see them as being twofold. First off I think it would very roughly seperate questions by complexity so if you're posting on the intermediate tier, you're thread isn't going to disappear too quick because of an influx of beginner questions. Second it would be an insentive to pursue points - you want to get more to get access to the higher echelons which, besides the standard ego reasons, would be useful since you are likelier to be interacting with programmers with a skill level of equal to or greater than your own.

I think the two of us will have to agree to disagree on the merits of your suggestion.

I would like to see posters have to check a number of check boxes (the exact number might vary per forum) that signify they have included in their message relevant information, such as:

1. version of the .net library,
2. version of the database,
3. language they want sample code in,
4. the error message they are receiving,
5. the code behavior that makes them think something is wrong,
6. the code behavior that they expect.
7. relevant code,
8. they actually read the forum description (placed in front of them for this purpose) and believe their post matches the forum it is posted in.
9. evidence they have actually tried to code it, rather than expecting (even demanding!) others do it for them.

That last one, when posters demand that others code it for them immediately, really annoys me.  Personally, I would prefer to reject those posts that demand others provide a code solution right away, along with the advice to learn some manners and do their own work, but that is not part of the moderating standards we go by.

Having a posting screen that had the users check off that their post complies with each of the above points might improve the quality of the original postings, which would reduce the workload for others to provide an answer (and get a higher answer percentage).

I would even like to see a set of FAQs coded by Forum(s) that the poster would be presented with before their post went thru.  That way, they might actually look at the FAQ that already answers their question before clogging up the forums with redundant posts.

Right now, the only advantage some forum users have over others is that, once a forum member posts enough times to get noticed by the moderators, and it is noticed that they routinely post in the correct forums, and that they aren't abusive, they are allowed to start a thread without moderator approval.

I could see having intermediate and advanced levels for some of the forum topics.  I would prefer to have the posters choose the forum and the moderators move it to the correct one.   Of course, someone has to define "basic", "Intermediate" and "advanced" for each forum so designated.  I'm not sure that's quite as easy to do on a consistent basis by different moderators as you might imagine. 

 

 

togakangaroo:

you're thread isn't going to disappear too quick because of an influx of beginner questions

 

Those types of questions are "easy" points, and will be answered very quickly (usually by half a dozen people all at once).  That means that the more obscure questions tend to hang around the Unanswered Posts list for some time. Chances are that they will remain there if they have nothing to do with ASP.NET.  You should also be aware that there are a number of people here who have MSFT after their names.  Their job is to do a sweep-up of all unanswered posts that have been lingering for 3 or 4 days or so and to provide answers wherever they can.  This is something that has been directly implemented by the Microsoft ASP.NET team.  Last I heard, over 80% of questions actually get answered here, which is a very high proportion.

You might well say that you need a much more urgent response than 3-4 days, and that's fair enough.  If it's that critical, you should be going to Microsoft Support directly.  Posting to community driven newgroups or forums (where all the participants are unpaid volunteers) is no gu