I'm not going to name names and I hope noone else will in this thread. But what is this rediculous and constant hassling people about not searching first about? I just read a thread where someone was harassed for not making a good title for their post. Yes, I get that it's a very good idea to search first and yes a better title can be helpful. But do people really think that harassing people about those things is going to change their habits? Don't get me wrong. I don't know what the solution is. But I am totally tired of some of the self appointed search police here. Maybe you search police could give the rest of us a break from it for a while.

NS

amen brother

Because when you spend a lot of your time trying to help, it gets a little grating to have the same questions asked over and over and over again. It's not easy trying to answer everybody's question. Those of us who do put a lot of time and energy into trying to help people, so I'm sorry if requesting that people put a little of their own time and energy into doing a little research before asking questions which have been answered many times before.

You would understand if you answered as many questions as I have.

I guess there are three responses I'll give when someone posts a question that has already been answered a dozen times and can be found with a little effort on the part of the poster (OP):

1. Post the answer yet again
2. Post a comment instructing the OP to search for their answer
3. Post nothing as it's just a pain in the arse repeating what is already available

I believe that once a question has been answered more than half a dozen times in separate threads it becomes a little unnecessary to keep answering it again and again, leaving me with options 2 & 3.

Option 3 is far less helpful than option 2, so often I will take the option 2 route but I think I should at least provide the keywords the OP needs to search with (I must admit I haven't always done this, but will try to in future). Telling someone to use search is an entirely valid answer, provided they are told what to search for (which may not always be obvious to the OP).

There's no reason for it to get nasty though or for anyone to resort to harassment, but unfortunately some OP's don't like being made to look stupid/lazy in public, and some posters are possibly a little too aggressive at times when telling the OP to go search (too much coffee, not enough sex, tripped over the dog, whatever).

What GeneralAntilles says is correct though, there are people here who spend a lot of time answering queries and it's often annoying to see someone post the same often answered questions without making any effort to see if it's already been answered before - that's pretty lame behaviour and ignorance isn't always an excuse.

I know I'm going to choose option 3 a lot more now, because I'm tired of helping people who are too lazy to do even the most basic search to try to find an answer to their question.

I've spent MANY MANY hours searching for answers to my own questions and the questions of others. If an OP can't be bothered to make even the slightest effort to help themselves, then why should I make any effort to help them?

Thanks Sungrove, for making me see the error of my ways.

sungrove, as regards the poster being "harassed" for not having an appropriate title, there is a very simple explanation (I do not harass such people myself, but I do point out "bad" titles): if the title of the thread is not descriptive enough, it will most probably be overlooked by the more helpful and active members in here, as well as by newbies who want to find out information for themselves. It is much better to have a title along the lines of: "Memory corruption bug in OS2007HE" than "Do you guys have this problem too?"; I hope you see what I mean here.
As regards your other point, I wholeheartedly agree with Millhouse and will try and do my best to point to some good search keywords in my replies.

HTH.

We could just ignore anyone asking same question again but this does make situation worse.

1. Anyone asking same question again makes situation harder for people who come next searching for same answer. Next person must read more threads and may end giving up and asking the question yet again making situation even worse. I think we are already at this stage now :-)

2. Also when such threads are ignored by those who could provide correct answer the thread grows anyway by answers from other clueless people and confuse those who come next even more. Example - there are several threads about USB host mode. I have personally answered in several such ones that host mode with OS2007 based N800 is possible and no, you don't need extra power for low power devices and still several similar threads popped up with people still claiming this is not possible or telling other people that they need extra power, etc.

It is quite frustrating to see this forum degenerate into mess. And you are doing it to yourself.

Yes, this is still valid choice. The helpful ones can simply go away.

I was puzzled by the title for a few seconds and I just cant stop laughing. You are definitely funny. I read those posts and that is exactly what I felt, a little bit too much. However, s/he does know a little bit more than others, I just look the other way. My wife keeps reminding me, pretty girl can always get away with anything, and you can only jealous .


bun

Fanoush writes: The helpful ones can simply go away.[/QUOTE]

I'd like to appologize for the rant aspect of my original post. But I want to thank you guys for taking seriously a subject that seems to be of interest and concern for many of us for different reasons. I obviously can't and don't speak for the group, but those that have responded to this post really should be appreciated for the help you provide dayly to folks. I particularly recall both Milhouse and Fanoush spending time trying to help me. So, please, if you want to go away, OK, but we like/ need your help if you care to offer it.

I easily see your point of view about feeling frustrated that people seem to just ask questions over and over again. I would like to thank Milhouse for laying out a constructive outline of options as responses to this problem. As I said before, I don't have the answers, but at some point you will get tired of answering and we will be timid to ask perhaps. I think maybe part of the problem here is the knowledge gap between us. This can be a problem I think for both parties. I may do a search to look for the answer to my question, I have read the posts. But because I don't have some of the background knowledge or vocabulary , I simply don't understand enough of the details of the solution the writer has offered to be able to make the last link in my head or maybe several things appear to me to be missing in the solution offered. Now I'm not saying that you are offering incomplete solutions. It's probably more that, given your knowledge , you may leave out some details that you take for granted as being part of the proceedure. And yah, I get that to fill in all those details could take more time than you are willing to put into it-quite understandable. Anyway, so I put a question together that I hope will elicit the answer I need. To you it just looks like I have just asked a question that someone else has already asked because it really is the same question in some ways-especially from your more educated point of view. To me it may seem less so because I need to understand it in a particular way.
This has been particularly so for me in situations that may require the use of Osso-xterm . You may give me the code to type in, but I don't even know how to activate that code.
So, obviously I would benefit greatly from simply becoming more educated about Linux. On the other hand, although greatly appreciated, I can totally understand action of simply not answering the same question again. I just think that would be preferable to being told once again to search out the answer.

NS

Then reply to the thread in which you found the solution with a request for more detail. I hardly see how finding a solution that you don't understand warrants a new thread when a perfectly good one already exists. Posting the new thread will only fragment the solution further, you do yourself and everybody else who searches for the solution a disservice by doing so. Clarifying details in the original thread will help everybody more.

At worst, if you absolutely must create a new thread, at least mention something about the fact that you searched and found a solution (or didn't), and that you didn't understand. Outline some of the points you missed, link to some of the solutions. Give us something to know that you've put forth some effort. I know I'm a lot more inclined to help somebody who has put forth the effort to help themselves than somebody who just spams new topics whenever they meet some minor problem and expects everybody to hand them answers on a silver platter.

Nobody here has a problem with helping people with less experience, what we do have a problem with is duplicating effort over, and over, and over, and over again.