I agree, and I just want to emphasize that I think that the guidelines that you describe could be and should be explained by this web site and that way there would be much less need to ever make things personal.
Printable View
I agree, and I just want to emphasize that I think that the guidelines that you describe could be and should be explained by this web site and that way there would be much less need to ever make things personal.
Forgive me for jumping back to the top of this thread, but it has split into several separate and valid opinions and observations and every one and everyone is right. Ravish need not apologize.
I think the perceived problem exists because this forum serves many purposes and many of us view its primary purpose differently. A year or so ago, it was a lot less busy and getting an answer to a well researched question was a lot easier. The questions were better stated (or so they seemed) and I felt obliged to research my questions for fear someone would give me a Microsoft Knowledge Base Q Number. A couple months ago, I wrote the webmaster, complaining of the new look and how I found the site less useful than it had been. (I think I said it was useless and to bring back the old CodeGuru.) I was angry that this tool I was using had become dulled. It seemed as if everybody had crowded into what I had considered my own personal (best kept) secret web site.
What had happened is this forum now serves a larger and more diversified group of interested people. With this diversity, the site is now stronger, robust and useful although I do have some strong feelings regarding how this forum is and should be used.
Homework questions? To me- not important. If one lets another learn for him then he has learned nothing,
Vague Questions? If someone's question is vague, it's not the end of the world. Most people involved in programming quickly learn how to frame both their thoughts and questions, especially when helped by friendly posters.
My pet peeve is the apparent lack of research undertaken by those posting questions. Not every question which has an easy-to-find answer, however, is put forward by a slacker. It is unfortunately a fact that not everyone knows how or where to look for answers. If they did, many of the more basic questions would be unnecessary. The postings regarding MSDN bear this out.
Sooo, how about adding a welcome page for new users. Suggest they search the site before posting a question. Let first time visitors view a listing of resources available to them and explain how to use them. To be honest, it took me a long time before I realized that the 'Overview' button on help items could provide me with an overview of the topic I was trying to understand -duhh. Also explain how the categories work, or are supposed to, and give an example of how to phrase a question.
Programming is perpetual learning. The varied levels of experience present in this forum result in a broad range of questions and answers and not every question has a single, correct answer. There is more than one way to write 'Hello World' and looking at some recent postings there's a new (to me) way of determining if an existing instance of a program is running. Let's not be too quick to turn to the 'One Size Fits All' solutions when a more elegant one may be waiting to be posted in response to the next 'stupid' question.
Let's be careful we don't ask to have something fixed that ain't broke.
FredH
I think a FAQ for CodeGuru would be a good idea. Most (if not all) other newsgroups have a FAQ that newcomers have to read before posting a question. Whenever someone new asks a question straight from the FAQ, they're directed to the appropriate chapter and section of the FAQ, instead of repeating the answer over and over again.
Folks, this is not a radical idea. As stated above, this is used by all programming newgroups. I'll even start with a few:
MFC related:
- My debug build works, but my release build doesn't. Why does this happen, and how do I fix it?
- Why doesn't AfxMessageBox( ) work for a dialog based MFC app?
- How do you get a CEdit to accept only (numbers, letters, etc.)?
- How do you move the cursor of the CEdit control to a certain location?
- How do you program Windows "skins"? (This question seems to be very popular these days from beginners in Windows programming, who are not aware that this is an
advanced topic).
- I am trying to declare a Windows callback function in my C++ class, but I always get a compiler error "cannot assign function of type blah to type blah2". What am I doing wrong?
- In VB I can do this advanced Windows thing-a-bob easily. Why is it so hard in VC++ to do the same thing?
The general C++ FAQ which is posted on the internet from time to time, could be used for these type questions:
- Wbat is a class?
- How do you declare a global / local variable
- What is a template?
etc.
Regards,
Paul McKenzie
I think FAQ is a good idea and it will help everybody to get the answers what we want.
Ravi
An FAQ would be good and I will support it but in my opinion the only reason a question is asked frequently is because it is not answered elsewhere. In other words, I think it would be better to put the information in an overview also or something like that. But that is a detail that is not important.
The important thing is that there easily could be more help provided by this web site that would make it much more effective in a variety of ways.
Something that is a big problem is the apparent lack of moderation, where I mean that the people responsible for this facility do not seem to be managing it. The moderator is Chris Maunder but when I send a message to him the email gets sent back. I think that he is not the moderator any more. One good reason for beleiving that he is no longer the moderator is that he is now involved in a competing web site (see "The Code Project" at http://www.thecodeproject.com/), but the discussion forum software there is not very good (yet?). There should be a moderator for this discussion forum that responds to some of these problems.
There should be a suggestion box for these solutions to be put into. There are many more improvements that need to be made and now that the new management has had time they should proceed to make improvements. Otherwise the competion will quickly provide a better alternative.
You could always contact the webmaster.
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I'm not here for the rates, but rating a post is a good way for me to know how much i helped. Private messages will do also.
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Daniel
Yes, it would be easy to send a message to the webmaster but unless they respond there would be no contact.
I am assuming that there would be little or no response since there has been no effort made to solicit us. Assuming I am right about the lack of a moderator, that inadequacy is sufficient to indicate to me that there is not much chance of making contact.
Ya know what I mean?
I program as a hobby, I find it fun, and sometimes frustrating. I have seen many people telling others to look at MSDN, until the other day, I didn't know it was free online, all I knew was that you could dish out hundreds of dollars to get it on CD. And the books, hobbyists don't usually have $40 or $50 to dish out for a book.
And we don't all think alike, I have a hard time finding what I want in the help, we don't all use the same terms. And on MSDN, I looked up printing, and I didn't find what I wanted, maybe someone else could but searches like that don't seem to work for me, I come up with irrelevant matches to what I want, according to the search it fits, but it doesn't work for me.
Some one said, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever, or something like that, but I learn more from examples and figuring out stuff. To teach someone to fish, you usually cast the line yourself first, and then tell them how to, but some can learn just by watching.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, it's not meant to be.
,Plumfield
http://truespacecastle.8m.com
Hi, codeguru.
Basically, I am against the idea of FAQ.
This is mainly because we can find FAQ of Visual C++ at
Microsoft home page or MSDN CD-ROM.
If people working this web site take a time to make FAQ,
I want them to ask to modify this web site better.
I need the information to support my project in order to save time.
Number of the sample code is large and I need to find the article
which I want by a shorter time.
I guess that 200-300 people post their question to Visual C++ every day and I can't read all questions and answer.
Sometimes, I want to read the good answer, and in this case,
I check the question of the high score.
I also need the professional VC++ programmer question and what kind of
project they are working now.
Since many different level of people related to VC++ check this website, I don't ask the busy people working this site to make FAQ for the only beginner.
Regards.
-Masaaki Onishi-
Hi All,
As you have probably guessed I am no longer involved with CodeGuru. I have sent emails to Earthweb asking that my name be removed as moderator, but as many others have found, I get no response.
I apologise for the inconvenience but it really is out of my hands. CodeProject.com is now growing and it's nice to be able to react to peoples suggestions and build a site according to how developers want it, not how advertisers want it.
Have a great new year everyone!
cheers
Chris Maunder
http://www.codeproject.com- designed for developers
When people are directed to MSDN, they've complained that they don't have MSDN (even though they do via the web). Instead of getting in a fight with these people, I would suggest an introductory page to CodeGuru VC++ forum that has a link to a series of FAQ's (MSDN, C++, etc), and it is stated up front on the introductory page that "these FAQ's should be read thouroughly before posting a question". There would be less questions concerning basic C++. Windows, and MFC, and more "quality" questions.
Also, many good answers to posts are not rated. By searching for a high score, you may be missing out on excellent answers. If the question is advanced in nature (i.e. not in a FAQ or is very sophisticated), and a response is given, you will have a good chance that the response is very good, even though it's not rated.
.
Regards,
Paul McKenzie
I should correct my last sentence in the first paragraph:
"There would be less questions concerning basic C++. Windows, and MFC, and more "quality"
questions. " should mean
"There would be less questions concerning basic C++. Windows, and MFC, and more "quality"
questions will appear on CodeGuru".
Regards,
Paul McKenzie
Hi, Professor Paul.
I don't think that the number of the same question decreases even
though Codeguru makes the section of FAQ.
Now, we can find some answers by search to the same question. But,
some people don't know search or even though they know search, they
directly post the question since they may lazy.
While I read this message about two years, I found that many good
VC programmers attend this message board. But they are gone since
some people post the same question, I guess.
Currently, Codeguru deals with huge information and therefore,
we can't find the information which we want easily partly because some people post the same question.
Last, since I am working at some project of VC++ and get frustration
by the situation that I can't figure out the reason of the bug, I don't try to find the same bug answer in Codeguru since this requirements are complicated and even though I try to find this,
unuseful posts must be there.
FAQ is not a good solution to decrease the many same questions.
This is individual job. Rather, Codeguru adds the web page to tell that before you post the question, try to find the same post by search engine. And if they post the same question, Codeguru excludes
these posts from the message board.
Regards.
-Masaaki Onishi-
Wow, I hope you called me professor because I told you I'm an adjunct, and not that you're being sarcastic :-0
Your last sentence is a good start. Add a simple page to inform the beginner do a search for the question and see if an answer is posted already. As a matter of fact, I don't know why more people don't do this. They could get their answer immediately, instead of posting a message and waiting a few hours or days before someone answers it.
Regards,
Paul McKenzie
An FAQ would be a web page or web pages. The exact format of the material is not as important as providing the material in some format.
When you say "Codeguru excludes these posts" that assumes that there is someone doing that kind of thing. There are definitely substantial improvements that could be attained with just a little management of this discussion forum but currently there is very little management being provided.