Things to do before posting!

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Originally posted by Elrond

Answer to question 1 is probably a lot.

Answer to question 2 is based on the number of times a question is asked in the forum (may be 3, 5 or 10)

Answer to question 3 is almost every one, and certainly every beginner. I think the question should not be who needs it, but who will take the time to look at it. Then, much less people will.

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Answer to question 1 is very little. It will require as much time to answer each question as is spent to answer each question each time it is asked. Actually, an answer in a FAQ could be a summary of multiple previous answers, so a search for previous answers could be done. This would be something that should be done by the people that ask the question before asking the question.

Answer to question 2 is easy to answer if you are someone that has volunteered a lot of time to try to help others in this forum. It has been quite a while since I looked at many of the questions in this forum but I can sure remember a couple of FAQ. They are how to convert:

• CString to/from char *
• number to string

A FAQ is something that volunteers such as Paul want so that their time is better spent. People getting help in this forum sometimes forget that answers are provided by volunteers. Making a FAQ is something that the forum management could do. It would require a small amount of time to do. Yet after multiple owners of this web site, this is something that has not been done. It is something that would be easy for the management to do that they could do to help the volunteers but they do not even do that small request. There are many other experts that have spent time in the past trying to help and then leaving in frustration.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/

Everyone has access to MSDN.

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Originally posted by Jan de Kort
Not everyone has got MSDN; especially those doing programming for a hobby and not for a living...

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Night_Hawk, please read the entire thread before posting. I realize that this particular thread is quite large, but your answer has already been provided at least once. I think this answer was provided in this thread at least two previous times.

Please read the entire thread before replying to it!

It seems ironic that the subject of this thread is "Things to do before posting" or something such as that. Reading all of a discussion before joining in the discussion seems like a very simple and obvious thing to do.

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Originally posted by Jan de Kort
Not everyone has got MSDN; especially those doing programming for a hobby and not for a living...

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Yeah, BUT... it's online.... http://msdn.microsoft.com and if you can't get to that, then you can't get to codeguru.com to ask the question.

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Originally posted by Dark Mage


Yeah, BUT... it's online.... http://msdn.microsoft.com and if you can't get to that, then you can't get to codeguru.com to ask the question.

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People, can you believe this? Is this an indication of the type of thing discussed in this discussion; that is, that some people don't do some of the basic things that should be done before posting?

Hi,

I read this thread because it had 67 posts! I agree with most of what has been said here, with the possible exceptin of the FAQ idea.

I think there should be a FAQ, but rather than try to answer all the common C++ questions, it should describe self-help techniques to get answers.

Here are some of the things I think it should contain.

1. Explain about MSDN online and how to use it.

2. Explain that typing an error # and/or the text of the message into a search engine (such as Google) will often get the information needed. Also describe general web searching techniques.

3. Explain that when a question is posted, and the answer given is the name of a function (e.g. use atoi to convert ascii to integer.) The poster can and should look up the function in MSDN before asking for more explanations. Granted there is often a need for explanation of MSDN answers.

4. Explain how and when to search the forum.

5. Explain how to frame a question in the forum. (What to include, How much detail, when to post code, etc.)

It should be prominent, brief (use links to detailed explanations) and impossible to miss. It should be required reading for new members (as part of the sign up process.

What I'm picturing is a small section at the top of the forum, with a few bulleted items that describe topics and link to the explanations.

One last note. (pet peeve) are people who come here looking for free advice and then complain about the answers they receive and act like they have some right to have their problems solved for them.

Sorry,

One more thing. When I give someone an answer that is easily found in MSDN or other common resources. I try to give them both the answer and explain how I found it.

I think most people would rather do it themselves, if they knew how. It certainly takes much less time to look things up than to wait for someone else to answer a question.

I have often seen people pos questions, argue about answers and spend DAYS resolving an issue that could have been done in a few HOURS.

(Thats right. I said hours. Perhaps the FAQ could explain that if you are not prepared to spend hours solving a problem, progamming might not be your cup of tea.)

Actually, The "help" you get from the MSDN CD's is a copy of what's on the website. Whatever you find on the MSDN DVD is also available on the website, there is one exception, and that's articles/exceprts of books/magazines.

The information on the website should be slightly more up to date, as it is "alive", the DVD is a snapshot taken at a certain point in time.

A big disadvantage about the website version is of course that it's not integrated into VC, a live internet connection is needed and that the website is often quite slow (even on a broadband internet connection).


The MSDN DVD is an option. The VC I bought for use at home came WITHOUT the MSDN help. At home I use the website (Not an big issue for me since I have ADSL). At work, of course there's the regular updated DVD's (formerly CD's). I think many people just do not know all the info is available on the microsoft website.
Then again. Even if you have MSDN, some things are very hard to find.

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Originally posted by billwilson3 When I give someone an answer that is easily found in MSDN or other common resources. I try to give them both the answer and explain how I found it.

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I agree generally except I think a topic for an additional article is a page describing how to search and things such as that. I made a small start on that in my article at:

http://www.cpp.atfreeweb.com/KnowledgeBase.html

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Originally posted by billwilson3 I think most people would rather do it themselves, if they knew how. It certainly takes much less time to look things up than to wait for someone else to answer a question.

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I sure agree that it would often take less time to look something up, and I have even said so in some of my replies. That is, I have provided an answer a few times that the person could have easily found on their own and I have said so in some of my answers.

I have seen many situations where in my opinion it is not understandable that they don't know how. For those of us that volunteer a lot of our time trying to help, we see a lot of laziness. I think the laziness is one of the main reasons many good specialists have stopped helping, so people can defend the laziness as much as they want but if they want quality help they should try to do something about it. Others can criticize me for being intolerant of laziness but that won't get the others back to help.