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Technical Q&A peeves

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by lordinfidel

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I apologize if this is just a Rant and Rave. But I am just a little peeved about replying to questions posted on the Techincal Q&A.

Basically, if you are going to ask a question, and someone replies to it. At least have enough decency to give areason when closing out the question and rejecting their answer.

The thing that is pissing me off the most, is that 95% of the time my answer was correct and I was the only person who posted. I feel like the author took my advice and instead of awarding me the points, rejected the answer and closed the question. The points then went back to the poster, the poster got their answer and we got nothing.

I can tell you something, you can burn people like me once, but you won't do it twice.
Plus, everytime you people reject one of our answers, it counts against us in our answer average.

And if you are going to post a question, have the decency to follow up on the question. If you figured it out yourself, say so and tell us what the solution was.

I reply to questions because when I first started out I had questions of my own. Back then there were limited places to look for answers. But one thing I learned back then was as IT Profesionals we owe it to our peers to share our knowledge and help each other out. You never know when you will need help.

Thanx for listening.

11 replies

by generalist

I agree with your Rant and Rave, which is one of the reasons I have avoided the Technical Q & A area for the most part.

I would suggest that we come up with what might be called an Open Source design solution.

We start by listing the advantages and disadvantages of the existing system, perhaps gleaning things from various postings. For example, I didn't realize that pulling a question would affect your answer average.

We then figure out what we would want the ideal system to look like if we had the resources to build it. I'm sure that lots of people have lots of ideas.

The next phase is to winnow through the resulting documentation and design the specs of this ideal system. We would want to eliminate the weaknesses while keeping strengths and adding inprovements. We would also want to avoid adding other weaknesses.

When all of this is done, we come up with programming solutions that meet the specs. TechRepublic could then implement the best solution.

Consider it a way of fixing the problem rather than always complaining about it.

by jimbb

As SyscoKid mentioned, this discussion has been going on for a while, both here and in the Q&A section. I find it fun to answer questions, to test my knowledge and experience. But the fun is wearing out because of the people that seem to be greedywith their points.

Hey, it's not the points, not even the statistics that make this worth while, it's the simple satisfaction that I've been able to help someone. But that satisfaction can only come from some kind of acceptance, and the points-system is the only option we have here.

With the little icons it's easy to see if someone has managed to gather 5K or 10K points. Maybe the reject and unrated percentage of the poster can be shown as well? If the greedy ones get less answers, with a little luck they'll just start to behave more mature...

Jim

by syscokid

If you click on a user's name you can see their question history: questions asked, answers accepted, answers rejected, and unrated answers.

If they don't have a peer directory entry, you get that right away. If they do have an entry, you have to dig a little deeper to find it.

by jimbb

I know I can get the info, unless they block it - and some people have reason to do so. But do I really want to dig, and "check" if I want to reply? Or more precise, if it's "worth" to reply? Not really, to be honest. I've been thinking about giving a small remark when answering, should the guy's statistic show more rejects than questions, but what the heck.

As I said, it's fun to answer, and it's the satisfaction that keeps me doing it (as in anything ;-)). I won't let a few lamers spoil my fun. If they want to play their game, so be it. Let them have it.

But maybe this little icon may show them that there are two sides to the coin. It's not the points, it's the appreciation. In a recent question that had a lot of attentionyou said something similar too. Well, I can only hope that the lamers in this (tech)world start to see that one cannot eternally take without giving. And as far as I'm concerned all they really need to give is something like "Yes, it worked".

And if people really are concerned about their points, they can always ask a 5 point question. I'll answer them too, if I can.

Jim

by admin

if making the Tech Q&A a discussion forum here wouldn't improve it in a lot of ways. for one, the point issue disappears. Another good reason may be that peers can jump in and help answer or describe an improvement to an answer, or even discuss the pro's and con's of different methods. In reality, there are usually a lot of different ways to solve an IT problem. A dialogue seems more useful than a contest in this case -at least to me.

An IT trivia or other contest, on the other hand, may be a fun way to use the Q&A software.

:>

by admin

I don't answer ?'s there much anymore either.

One thing I found after e-mailing back and forth with some of the people posting was that they were unable to understand an answer because it was outside their experience, not because they were hoarding tech points.

You can't really argue with someone who says you are wrong because re-formatting and reloading always fixes the problem, therefore it is the right answer. Neither can you really help someone fix some mail program problems if they can't figure out how to use a text editor, or are uncomfortable with it. The Gui or third party software answer always wins.

I did find some good questions and dialogues there too, but dealing with someone in e-mail that is aggressive after answering a question pretty much finished it for me -at least for now.

by klingon

for a while at least....I've bitched about it here as well...Some putz named 28 asked the most generic question about setting up a vpn, so I posted an answer, told him/her how i set mine up, and asked if I could provide more details. NOTHING!! It's been two months now, I'm the only one who took the time to reply, and THE SON OF A BITCH NEVER CAME BACK!!!

Anyway...You're not alone..
Klingon

by lordinfidel

I read thru the responses and I do appreciate the positive feedback.

I think it is safe to say that most of us don't reply to questions just to get points.

At least that's not my reasoning for answering.

I enjoy the challenge of looking ata problem and trying to fix it.

As one of the posters put it, it would be nice just to get a "hey it worked". Which is basically my peeve.

I don't really care about the points so much as just a reply back. Let me know if I was right or off the mark.

Allot of times we might get half information from the poster and if a dialogue was opened and we got further info, the answer would be clearer.

The tech community as a whole does benefit from the Q&A. Both beginners and experts alike can share knowledge. There has been several times where I have read a question and I thought, hey that's cool, did'nt know that.

I'm just glad to see that I am not alone out there and hope more people read our little rant session.

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