Things to do before posting!

Hi All
Now I see many people are posting in the forum, with out even looking for the information in MSDN or in Help. Most of the questions posted here are very easily found in the MSDN, but I still many are like that. I think now people doesnt want to bother themselves looking into the help. What I was figuring about the forums are that, only the questions that are not easily found in helps should be posted. That will make the forum an good treasure to find more intresting things, than to post the trivial question.
Before posting they dont even search in the forum, since i saw MANY questions are reapeated MANY times.
I dont know if you agreee with me, but I see the forum is flooded with such questions only.

I have the same feeling about this forum. Sometimes it seems that some people ask for solutions for their homeworks. People sould look for answers first from the MSDN help, this forum or other forums, and those very good examples posted on www.codeguru.com. I think as programmers we all like to help each other, but we don't like to be used if people just come here to ask for some free codes even not to try by themselves first.

Allen

I agree. There are many questions here where all that is needed is to search MSDN, search CodeGuru, a general web search like Altavista, or just look in a C++ book. For example, there have been a lot of questions concerning implementing edit controls that allow certain characters. A search on CodeGuru will turn up at least 4 or 5 code libraries that handle masked edit controls.

The laziness factor can be summed up with what happened here a few months ago:
There was a post from a person who was getting angry with the answers we were giving him, because "they didn't solve his problem". It was getting hostile, and a couple of us (including myself) just let him know that we are not the Microsoft technical staff. It turns out that the advice we gave him was indeed correct (we basically said to look for the article "Qwhatever" in MSDN). He was just too lazy to do the search himself, even when we gave him the article number! When one of us actually wrote out the answer for him, he was then satisfied!!

Regards,

Paul McKenzie

I am someone that has many, many, many times simply looked up the answer and given the reference to where I found the answer. I only do what the person could have done and should have done. I am hoping that the person gets the hint.

Sometimes people post code that anwers a question but the answer is also in the documentation and I think it is better to let the person go to the documentation when the documentation is sufficient.

How does it go: Give them a fish and they eat for a day; teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime. Right?

Something else that is very frustrating are all the vague questions. Some people might think I ma being rude for asking for clarifiaction but it is not always clear to me whether it is best to simply ignore vague questions or if I should try to help by trying to explain that they need to put at least as much work into asking the question as they want us to put into the answer.

Hello guys,
Please take a look at a hand of yours. Is the length of its fingers the same or not the same? It seems to me that all the fingers of your hands have the same length. So your hands look terrible. The same are your personal opinions!

Not everyone has got MSDN; especially those doing programming for a hobby and not for a living...

Not everyone has got MSDN; especially those doing programming for a hobby and not for a living. Furthermore the syntaxes given in MSDN are often not clear for beginners.

Please do not discount beginners. If the question is vague, it could be for a reason. May be they deserve a more general opinion kind of answers. More patience and well meaning is required from all. There are areas (like COM, ActiveX, ATL) that are so foreign to me. On the other hand I feel alot better about MFC, printing, Doc/View. When I ask if MS ActiveX controls used in Html can be accessed by a Mac browser, to many of you it can not get any more trivial. But trust me, the answer is (as far as I can tell) is not staring me in the face.

It is true that everybody does not have MSDN. However for god's sake beginners should buy some books. But as I said sometimes nothing is better than a patient guru helping you out.

yalcin
[email protected]

(1) What is MSDN?
(2) Is this question dump? and shouldn't be asked ?

You have an ally. They are so arrogant with their handful of knowledge! They have to be more thoughtful and considerate.

Regards,

A used-to-be-a-fisherman SW programmer.

Are you foolin' me?

Gee, I thought this was a place to look for help, not get a lecture on how lazy I supposedly am.

True, but much MSDN info is also available online at http://msdn.microsft.com.

MSDN = Micrsoft Developer Network. It is a large collection of technical specs and articles about Windows, MFC and various Micrsoft APIs. You can subscribe and get quarterly CD shipments, and much of the information is also available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com. If you develop Windows apps for a living, then an MSDN subscription is a must.

No, it wasn't a dumb question.

I think the forums are fine the way they are. Sure, there's a lot of silly questions, even some people looking for homework answers. But people who do that will never get far in life anyway.

I would have loved to have had CodeGuru when I was teaching myself programming. Unfortunately, the web (at least as it exists today) didn't exist, and I instead picked up many bad habits and misconceptions from the BBS software code I had bought from WWIV (ahh, the good ole days).

re: Buying your tools, some people just can't affort programming books. Those things are damned expensive. I know there are programmers on this board that got their free copy of GNU or maybe some high-school-sanctioned free compiler and they're just hobbyists. In my experience, people who start out this way become the best programmers because they're tinkerers. We should encourage them, not tell them to take a class & buy a book.

There are also cultural differences. What may seem horribly unclear to you may be the best effort to a person who is not writing in his native language.

Finally, and this is the biggest point, I find as much joy in giving a good answer as I do in receiving one. We're a community here, and a rather large one at that. This is no time to start getting elitist. If somebody really bothers you, just don't reply to their posts. But what happens when you crush the spirit of somebody who's earnestly lost and needs help? Gotta act on faith sometimes.

All in all, I think things are fine the way they are. I'd much rather get lame or vague posts than no posts at all.

I don't think this is due to arrogance - I just think it's frustration with the lack of ambition and desire for instant gratification, especially after working so hard to learn something yourself. The best way to learn is to try to figure something out for yourself. We all need help sometimes, but one should at least try before looking for a quick fix.

I dint intened to to accuse ppl. If it implied i'm really sorry abt this.And you know this forum is for getting answers.
Well, not every one knows all the things. I have got more help for ppl in this forum and I'm always great ful them.
What I suggested is that, ppl can just search once in the forum (or if they have MSDN). If that question is answered then they can find their answers quickly!
Well, if it hurted any one of you, I'm sorry.
Ravi

Thanks Bob. Your help are greatly appreciated.

Thanks Bob. Your help is greatly appreciated.

nt = no text :-)

If all of you permit, could I have a final word:
We are a big family, from India to Brasil, from America to Africa, with different types, levels, old, young, expert, inexperienced, ... . We are helping each other and being helped. Let's forgive and forget, and continue to extend our knowledge to others who need it.

Sincerely Yours,

David Hoang

During the last 12 months I've posted 6 questions and received one answer. This discussion makes me wonder if my questions were too easy (or too dumb) for the experts to answer, or they were too difficult. Anyone who does programming, for fun, homework or for a living, is certainly not lazy (physically or mentally). It's true that there are many levels of experience and different areas of knowledge and skills: What is easy for me may be extremely difficult for other and vice versa. The point is when someone poses a question, let's take it seriously and help if one can, and if not, just move on. Don't try to pigeon hole people based on a question.

Signed: In university teaching/research for over 25 years.

Everyone using this discussion forum has the MSDN. It is available to all on the internet for free. Just look.

I agree that there is a difference between being vague in spite of doing the best you can and being vague because you have not done the best you can. I know you are someone that tries, and I think I will never get frustrated with you. If you or someone else needs help clarifying then I can enjoy helping with that. I know that for me sometimes things are so unclear that I do not even know how to ask my question, and I can understand being in that situation. But I am also someone that might spend at least a couple of hours just on a question I want to ask.

It is sometimes not clear to me whether to ignore a question or to try to help the person get help. If a person does not know that their question is not clear then they could easily get wrong answers or no answers. Us oldtimers used to say: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

A big part of the problem is a lack of moderation. The type of guidelines that started this discussion is the type of guidelines that should be stated officially and clearly in a manner that is more supportive and understanding than we are being here. When frustrations get to the point that they are in this discussion we certainly are less likely to be patient and understanding.

The methodology of how, what and where to search is something that could be explained better by this web site. Some people seem to not even know about the online MSDN and Knowledge Bases, but the existance of those facilities and especially the CodeGuru facilities could easily be explained better by this web site.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically.

Sometimes I feel like telling someone that if they do not want the heat then get out of the kitchen. Sorry, I mean I feel like telling them if they want something easy they should use Visual Basic not Visual C++.

So tell me what to do when a question is so vague that it is not likely to get a good answer. Should I ignore it? Leave it unanswered? I do that a lot. Should I try to help the person to understand that the question needs clarification? I do that sometimes.

That's entirely up to you, depending on your patience. In my business of education, it's my duty to explore the questions further or to give answers for a variety of scenarios. But I must confess, when I was younger, keeping my cool was'nt easy sometimes.

What about when the motivation is primarily to help?

Many times it is the person asking the question that is impatient, you know what I mean?

It is often tempting to try to explain to someone that they have not explained their problem well. For those people that resent being told their question is unclear, it is certainly foolish to try to help them.

I think there is a difference between constructive and destructive criticsm. I certainly agree that destructive criticsm should be aggresively avoided.

The type of thing I am often very tempted to criticize are the questions with subjects like "Please Help" and "Urgent" without much of an indication of the actual subject. I usually ignore them and I wonder how many other people ignore them. I think there should be a way to let people know that it helps to provide more meaningful subjects and I think that the web site could communicate that in a very reasonable manner better than it currently does.

I agree!

Often times the post is something like:
"Hi how do I build a program"

This question is fairly useless. What kind of program is it. What is your development environment etc...

People need to think about their question before posting. In order to answer a question, the guru needs to know the context of the problem.

Sometimes if the question alludes to something that I believe I can solve, I will have the poster clarify. Usually, however (sadly) I just end up ignoring that question.

I don't wish for anyone to be offended by any of this, but I am glad that these problems are being posted - it may help someone realize that they are doing something which doesn't aid their cause.

Brian Budge

You two gentlemen are doing great. You show thoughtfulness, dedication,
maturity and sensitivity. You want to help and it hurts when you can't seem to
get through. Take, for example, the question: Hi, How do I build a program?
If my college son asks me that question, I'll be very pleased because he is
interested, motivated and wants to learn something. In Codeguru forum, it is
important not to kill someone's interest and motivation by showing a
condescending attitude. It is also important to keep an open forum as it is
because everybody is benefitting from it, from the top experts to high school
students with the first taste of MFC (do you want to kill it?). Besides, who is
going to judge the judge who makes the decision to exclude or include a certain questions.

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.

---===---
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.
---===---
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.

I'm not against the FAQ, what they might do to help repeat questions, is when a question has been asked, say three times, they add links to all the answers. Also, I am more likely to look at an FAQ before searching. The moderator or webmaster or whoever could also add more specific categories, like printing, and also have the default category something that couldn't be used, I think some people don't pay attention to that.

,Plumfield
http://truespacecastle.8m.com

I have even better idea for CodeGuru's webmasters :
When somebody submits a question, perform search on subject of this question, and in confirmation page show links to possible answers. So, if the answer to the question will be found, the question will not be actually posted to the forum.

Jack.

How should we let the webmasters know about the proposals?
Do they go through this one?
Ravi

Many people in this message thread described, that they wrote mails to CodeGuru Webmasters and recieved no responce. Unfortunately, I think, Earthweb needs from this site just it's traffic and doesn't want to improve something :-(

Jack.

Hi..
Jack is right..
i sent few emails to the webmasters and recieved not respone..
I saw one day, i dont remember when.. i post here in CG that looked for our suggestions how to improve the site...
i dont think they did somthing about it...
Regards
kishk91


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