Is it too easy to ask for help?

[lafrente]

I see bunch of people with 1 or 2 posts asking for help, and there's been times where I solved the issue with a single reply. Then they either don't even bother to like or thank, and act like they figured it out themselves. My last post is one example. Or sometimes they get help, yet they pick their own reply as the best answer which is hilarious.

 

Now, we are here basically spending our own time to help out others. Literally a free service here. Of course we do it because we want it, and we can stop at any time we want. And myself partly because I had help from the forum when I was building a pc and paying it back which I believe I have. There are people who help out way more than myself, so it's not nice to see people's time go unappreciated and not given feedback, and these people act like its our duty or something. 

 

Can there be anything done about this? I feel like trying to solve problems of unappreciating people isn't the best way to use our time.

[seon123]

You aren't forced to reply to any topics. People that help others can do it for their own sake, because it's fun to research for themselves, and to share that knowledge -even if it does seem quite basic.

[colonel_mortis]

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve it? I recognise that helping can be a bit of a thankless task in topics like that, but getting people to change their behaviour is a hard problem, especially when they're just coming to ask for help and don't have any existing connection to the site.

[Lurick]

A lot of times new users don't exactly understand the forum layout or how it all works so they might not know how to mark something as solved or understand how to quote people or anything and you just have to live with that. I honestly would say if you are expecting rep then you're going about this all wrong. This is done by people for fun/learning/etc. and not for "rep" or being thanked for every post. There are also plenty of examples of people who think this is like twitter or facebook where every though needs a new topic/post or they think they should repost after 5 minutes because they didn't get help the first time. There isn't anything you can do about it and honestly I would rather help someone out and not get a like/reply/whatever and solve their issue than someone come here, make 1 post with no useful information for their problem and then log out and never come back when people are willing to help them.

[WereCatf]

13 minutes ago, lafrente said:

Can there be anything done about this? I feel like trying to solve problems of unappreciating people isn't the best way to use our time.

There isn't really a technical solution to this kind of a social problem, you know. I, personally, do quite like to help people and offer some advice -- as one might deduct from my post-count -- but I choose not to spend my time on low-effort posts. That is, people who don't even try to formulate good questions or make their posts actually readable and who don't value other peoples' time or the effort they expend on trying to help others enough to both expending any effort on their part to make it easier for others to help them.

 

Obviously, there are people who just aren't good at English, for example, but it still shows if they've tried their best, and if I can understand what they're after, I try to help them as well.

[lafrente]

1 minute ago, colonel_mortis said:

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve it? I recognise that helping can be a bit of a thankless task in topics like that, but getting people to change their behaviour is a hard problem, especially when they're just coming to ask for help and don't have any existing connection to the site.

Maybe a message in thread creation process, "If someone helped you with your issue, consider to use thank & like or choose best answer"? It could either be permanent, or just active for the first 50 posts or something, until they get used to it? And maybe not allowing people to pick their own answer as the best. 

[WereCatf]

5 minutes ago, Lurick said:

I honestly would say if you are expecting rep then you're going about this all wrong. This is done by people for fun/learning/etc. and not for "rep" or being thanked for every post.

I would be lying, if I claimed that I don't enjoy it when people feed my overblown, starving ego¹, but yeah; it's not the primary reason for me to post here nor do I expect it. I take it when I get it, but leave it at that.

 

¹⁾ I'm not saying I would mind some more feeding....

[lafrente]

6 minutes ago, Lurick said:

A lot of times new users don't exactly understand the forum layout or how it all works so they might not know how to mark something as solved or understand how to quote people or anything and you just have to live with that. 

I disagree. If you can figure out how to register, open a thread, ask a question, you can figure out how to click a like button. Plus people who seek help here are familiar with internet and computers. So I'd say pretty much everybody knows how to do it. If this was some kind of real estate forum, then I would kind of see your point.

[Boomwebsearch]

51 minutes ago, lafrente said:

I see bunch of people with 1 or 2 posts asking for help, and there's been times where I solved the issue with a single reply. Then they either don't even bother to like or thank, and act like they figured it out themselves. My last post is one example. Or sometimes they get help, yet they pick their own reply as the best answer which is hilarious.

 

Now, we are here basically spending our own time to help out others. Literally a free service here. Of course we do it because we want it, and we can stop at any time we want. And myself partly because I had help from the forum when I was building a pc and paying it back which I believe I have. There are people who help out way more than myself, so it's not nice to see people's time go unappreciated and not given feedback, and these people act like its our duty or something. 

 

Can there be anything done about this? I feel like trying to solve problems of unappreciating people isn't the best way to use our time.

 

I don't think that it should count towards a member's community reputation points if they mark their own reply as the answer to a thread, although many users are new to the forums, and don't understand the layout of the forums and how to forum software works completely right away after joining, we should be understanding of this. Either way, I help around the forums since I genuinely have a passion for helping users with their technology, and don't mind at all if I don't get one of my replies marked as the answer and/or any community reputation points, because at the end of the day, the only reason that I have continued participation around the forums is because I enjoy helping others with their technology even if I am doing it on my own time and not getting paid to do it.

[straight_stewie]

27 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

I don't think that it should count towards a member's community reputation points if they mark their own reply as the answer to a thread

I would agree in the general sense that a users own actions shouldn't count towards their reputation.

But I also don't think that that would be very effective to solving any particular problem. Most of the posts I see that fall into the category that is being discussed here are also from users with a very low post count. They likely only created their account to ask those questions and don't care about anything else. It'd be interesting to see the user statistics for those users, but I doubt you could even track those statistics that well (how do you write a program that distinguishes between someone who's gracious and someone who's not?)

I like to answer technical questions here because I know how bad other sites can be. For example, asking a question on most Stack Exchange sites is darn near pointless, as you're more likely to get replies about whether or not the question should be allowed to exist than you are to get replies that have anything to do with what you asked. If the cost of not becoming that site is that we have to answer the same questions repeatedly and never get thanked for it, then I'm personally willing to pay that cost.

One solution might be to introduce post voting, but I think that that introduces a whole host of other similar problems and also puts the forum on a path to becoming like a Stack Exchange site, which is not a direction that I would personally enjoy this forum heading in.

 

Here's what I think we should do, or rather, all we could do: Everytime you see a post that answered a question and the poster went thankless or even had their credit stolen, give the replier a reaction to boost their reputation.

[Boomwebsearch]

18 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

I would agree in the general sense that a users own actions shouldn't count towards their reputation.

But I also don't think that that would be very effective to solving any particular problem. Most of the posts I see that fall into the category that is being discussed here are also from users with a very low post count. They likely only created their account to ask those questions and don't care about anything else. It'd be interesting to see the user statistics for those users, but I doubt you could even track those statistics that well (how do you write a program that distinguishes between someone who's gracious and someone who's not?)

I like to answer technical questions here because I know how bad other sites can be. For example, asking a question on most Stack Exchange sites is darn near pointless, as you're more likely to get replies about whether or not the question should be allowed to exist than you are to get replies that have anything to do with what you asked. If the cost of not becoming that site is that we have to answer the same questions repeatedly and never get thanked for it, then I'm personally willing to pay that cost.

One solution might be to introduce post voting, but I think that that introduces a whole host of other similar problems and also puts the forum on a path to becoming like a Stack Exchange site, which is not a direction that I would personally enjoy this forum heading in.

 

Here's what I think we should do, or rather, all we could do: Everytime you see a post that answered a question and the poster went thankless or even had their credit stolen, give the replier a reaction to boost their reputation.

 

Maybe there could be an AI algorithm to allocate reputation points to users based on factors including quantity of posts, helpfulness of posts, time taken per each post, time user has been registered as an active member, etc. Although, I don't think that it matters at least for me, since I get self-satisfaction in helping and don't need points or anything to be happy that I am helping.

[lafrente]

5 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

 

Maybe there could be an AI algorithm to allocate reputation points to users based on factors including quantity of posts, helpfulness of posts, time taken per each post, time user has been registered as an active member, etc. Although, I don't think that it matters at least for me, since I get self-satisfaction in helping and don't need points or anything to be happy that I am helping.

The point is when you don't get a feedback you don't know if you helped or not either.

[LogicalDrm]

1 hour ago, lafrente said:

Maybe a message in thread creation process, "If someone helped you with your issue, consider to use thank & like or choose best answer"? It could either be permanent, or just active for the first 50 posts or something, until they get used to it? And maybe not allowing people to pick their own answer as the best. 

I have been under the impression that this should be just all around good manners. How ones parents raised you to behave. Then I stumbled across "Karen" - stories from Reddit. Apparently good manners and correct and professional approach has lost its meaning along the way.

 

Regardless, I'm the type of person who cares more about that truth and facts spread around, not my own precense as the one who spreads them. If I would care about being credited, I would have pursuit academic career.

[Boomwebsearch]

1 minute ago, lafrente said:

The point is when you don't get a feedback you don't know if you helped or not either.

 

There have been multiple times where the OP of a thread tags me or quotes me and thanks me for helping, and I have appreciated that, never requesting to have my reply marked with points or marked as the solution. And, I much rather prefer having written feedback than getting a community reputation or reaction point since those help me improve and be able to provide better help. Maybe there could be a feature added to give posters meaningful feedback (based on a text-based response instead of a reaction), although I know that I have tried to be as helpful as I possibly can and that is enough for me to continue participating on the forums.

[colonel_mortis]

It isn't something that can be added overnight, but do you think it would help if there was a message next to the reply box for the OP saying something along the lines of "if the topic has been solved, don't forget to say thanks to the people who helped, and use the "mark solved" button on the answer"?

[JoostinOnline]

2 hours ago, colonel_mortis said:

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve it? I recognise that helping can be a bit of a thankless task in topics like that, but getting people to change their behaviour is a hard problem, especially when they're just coming to ask for help and don't have any existing connection to the site.

It's been many years since I've been the admin/owner of an active forum, so this may have changed, but at least back then, our main concern was always activity.  Unless it was just hundreds of people asking the same question (which is usually solved by pinned FAQ topics), more activity was far more beneficial than it was a problem.

 

35 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

 

Maybe there could be an AI algorithm to allocate reputation points to users based on factors including quantity of posts, helpfulness of posts, time taken per each post, time user has been registered as an active member, etc. Although, I don't think that it matters at least for me, since I get self-satisfaction in helping and don't need points or anything to be happy that I am helping.

Forums aren't like mainstream social media platforms.  Reputations are kinda pointless.

 

 

I honestly like how active the forum is, even if it means answering the same questions regularly.  There's always something to do, and always an opportunity to help people.  Plus, information changes regularly, so old topics often are misleading.

[lafrente]

6 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

It isn't something that can be added overnight, but do you think it would help if there was a message next to the reply box for the OP saying something along the lines of "if the topic has been solved, don't forget to say thanks to the people who helped, and use the "mark solved" button on the answer"?

Yeah I do. There's a big white space at the right side of title and tags section when creating a topic. That space is where I thought it'be implemented, but of course whichever works best. And in that case I'd enable the message in certain forums where the main purpose of the topics is to seek help.

[straight_stewie]

2 hours ago, colonel_mortis said:

It isn't something that can be added overnight, but do you think it would help if there was a message next to the reply box for the OP saying something along the lines of "if the topic has been solved, don't forget to say thanks to the people who helped, and use the "mark solved" button on the answer"?

That sounds reasonable. I think there is already a message like this on some pages or in some stickies (if memory serves). Putting that in a more visible place to the OP wouldn't reduce enjoyment of the forum, but might help with this issue a bit.

[Boomwebsearch]

3 hours ago, colonel_mortis said:

It isn't something that can be added overnight, but do you think it would help if there was a message next to the reply box for the OP saying something along the lines of "if the topic has been solved, don't forget to say thanks to the people who helped, and use the "mark solved" button on the answer"?

 

@colonel_mortis; I like this idea, it would definitely help mark more threads as resolved where a working solution has been found. I would like to suggest a short video clip or something along those lines being added showing new users how to navigate and make the most of their experience with the forum software and all of it's features. A simple redirect script could bring newly registered members to the page on the forums where the video clip explaining the forum software + features is located (or maybe have a short demo play once for new users showing how the forums are setup). I understand that the demo for new users may be more difficult to implement, although I would like that more since it could bring to the Community Standards page after it played through and may be quicker and more interactive than a video. The two main things that I think new members should know upon joining would be the community standards and navigating/using features of the forum software.