Asking for help ? ....... food for thought ........

[Fraser]

As those on the forum who know me and my posts witness, I like to help people where able. It is just hard wired into my personality. My wife says I prioritise helping other people before doing my home chores ! I think this is a familiar situation with many Techs and engineers. We are generally friendly and helpful It pays not to annoy us though

OK, so what is this post about ?

Well over the years I have helped many people both in my home life and work. I get pleasure out of helping others to solve problems or just providing support in their learning experience. I was even a specialist technical instructor for 5 years in my job. I have always offered my help freely and without expectation of reward. It is good manners to thank people who have helped you though. That is all I hope for, an update on progress and some achknowledgment of the time I have given up to provide help. In the days before Internet forums Google etc, I had always received such acknowledgement from people I assisted. Sometimes I got the surprise of a thank you box of chocolates or a gift voucher

Move forwards into the Internet age with its amazing information resources and many forums that provide invaluable help and enjoyment to the membership.........

I regularly receive messages via the various forums that I am active on. People find one of my posts that is relevant to their 'issue' or just want general advice. I receive a question and I normally try to help, if able. What has become very obvious though, is that the majority of these people ask for my help and once they have the answer they needed, I never hear another word from them. No 'thank you' or update on whether my comments helped, just silence. I might add that I do receive thanks and updates from regular contributors to this friendly forum. It seems to be those who find my posts via Google and join just to ask me a question, then go silent.

I mentioned this to my 82 year old father a couple of weeks ago. He is no IT Geek, but his response was very interesting ..... he said "GOOGLE is to blame" I was a bit confused by this comment so he expanded. My fathers thoughts are that since information is so easily obtained using GOOGLE searches, such information no longer has 'value' in the same way as when a person helped another 'in the flesh'. People, especially the younger generation, are now used to 'asking' GOOGLE for help with problems or information....... and they never have to thank GOOGLE, the information is just served up on a plate and they move on ......... no need to even acknowledge the help or the source. It would appear that this behaviour has now crept into person to person communications and forum posts.

As my father put it bluntly....  "Fraser, you are effectively 'just' another form of GOOGLE to these people...... a source of free information to be tapped and exploited as they wish".

Sobering words indeed.

So to those who think like this..... please remember, you are asking for someone to give up their valuable time to both read your question, Research the answer and provide it for you in an easily understandable format. We do this freely and in our own time. Do not expect instant responses and DO consider at least thanking the person for their time !

Me ? I have become somewhat Jaded and fed up with being used like 'GOOGLE'. I will help those who deserve such. If people are just taking a short cut using a PM rather than reading a relevant thread or Googling the topic properly...... jog on, I will not be used as a human GOOGLE replacement.

Don't you just love it when someone posts in a long thread "How do I achieve X,Y,Z ..... I need a step by step guide and this thread is too long to read"

My response will now be, "if you want to achieve X,Y,Z, earn it and do the research..... you might actually LEARN something !"

Fraser

[BillB]

While the speed and ease of acquiring information has certainly been influenced by google, using people for what they know isn't new.

I remember as a young child asking my parents for the meaning of new words, and them telling me that I had to look it up in the dictionary if I wanted to know.  This entailed a lot of work for a small child as our unabridged 10 pound library dictionary was always at the bottom of some big stack of books or magazines.  But, it was a valuable lesson; soon, I stopped asking and just lugged out that dictionary, and took time to study the meanings.

As I tell my wife and other saintly people like yourself, there's an endless stream of people that will take advantage of your generous nature.  If you truly want to help them, then they need to put some effort into the process, themselves.

You have made the right decision.

 

[Brumby]

I understand your being jaded.  It is sometimes a thankless job assisting someone - and I know there are many members here that do a lot more of that than I.

I might take a slightly different slant on the "Blame Google" sentiment - and say that the fact that we are communicating via a text-based medium is what depersonalises many interactions.  You don't get face-to-face contact, nor even vocal intonation to connect you with the other parties.  It is that level of communication that will generate acknowledgement and thanks ... but that just can't happen on a forum like this.

That, however, is not to excuse the lack of appreciation.  If anything, it is an alert to the fact that when people do ask for help, that they should be mindful of what they are asking and offer some form of acknowledgement for any assistance given.

Another factor which I believe has contributed to this, is the fact that there are some people (it only takes a few) who come here with a selfish attitude.  Sometimes it is a cultural thing, sometimes it is language and sometimes it is through a sense of entitlement ... and sometimes it is hard to tell which.


The most effective learning is, indeed, when you have done some "hard yards" along the way.  However, when you have specialist knowledge in any given area, you become a valuable resource.  The risk here is that you can end up sharing this knowledge in great detail - and that takes time and sometimes a fair bit of effort.  I, on the other hand, only have some general knowledge, not any particular expertise which makes it easier to do some simple "steering" and not get buried too deep.  This is the approach I would suggest you adopt.

I say this because there are so many newcomers that have a basic misunderstanding of some fundamental that they need to be straightened out so they are able to find their answers.

[Brumby]

Don't you just love it when someone posts in a long thread "How do I achieve X,Y,Z ..... I need a step by step guide and this thread is too long to read"

My response will now be, "if you want to achieve X,Y,Z, earn it and do the research..... you might actually LEARN something !"

I understand the sentiment - and if a thread was 50 posts long, I'd probably give the same sort of response.  But what if it was 500 ... or 5,000 posts long?  I'm not sure how I would respond.

[Fraser]

Google searches long threads with ease and many long threads contain an 'index' in the first post to help late arrivals.

If you know there is Gold in them there hills, you dig for it

[BravoV]

Talking about gold, not sure if this even related, but another insight from a questioner POV.

"If you have to ask that question that way, you don't deserve an answer ..."

1st when I was naive & prolly stupid, I really hate it when I got this kind of replies.

But when you grow, learned more and maybe getting wiser, although not all the time, but in my experiences, majority this kind of answers are really worth in gold especially made by experienced members.

Just saying, especially as an enthusiast in electronics.

[NiHaoMike]

The most common argument against open source is "Why would anyone just give away something they worked so hard on?" The answer generally is along the lines of "Because others add to it for free and everyone ends up benefiting." Or they use that as an example of what they can do. Or they're frustrated by the state of commercial products (see consumer Windows prior to XP) and want some competition to get them to improve.

[abraxa]

The most common argument against open source is "Why would anyone just give away something they worked so hard on?" The answer generally is along the lines of "Because others add to it for free and everyone ends up benefiting." Or they use that as an example of what they can do. Or they're frustrated by the state of commercial products (see consumer Windows prior to XP) and want some competition to get them to improve.

While I don't want to derail this thread from its original topic, I do wish to comment on this. As a very active open source developer myself, I find it surprising how little regard other people give to the groups of people who spend a whole lot of their lifetime developing for open source projects. It's frustrating to do all this work, only to see people complain saying "your project sucks because it's not as good as commercial products X and Y" or file bugs with an attitude that screams "your project sucks because things don't work for me and I expect you fix it for me right now". It's really strange to me, considering these people haven't paid any of the devs anything and yet act like a paying customer. In essence, it's easy to feel being taken for granted as an open source dev, too. (btw, I'm not trying to fish for compliments here.)

So to me, the point OP makes applies here as well: people generally seem to be content to take what they can get with as little payment as possible. Why they think that's okay? The internet certainly plays a role here but to me, it's just a symptom of societies where empathy is generally lacking. You see that kind of behavior much less often in Japan, for example, where people are raised to consider the feelings of the person you're interacting with.

[Fraser]

Abraxa,

I totally agree. Another example of a declining society where people have become selfish and focus only on their own needs.

Fraser

[HecticZA]

@OP
I think Louis Rossman and Jessa refers to them as "Please Bro" people.

I often ask for help, but usually only after a while, once I get to know people on the forum or platform and a bit about the subject as best as I can.

I must say this seem to be one of the better forums in that regard.

I've had a go at Arduino last year and and the couple of groups I frequented had a very tough attitude with regards to newbies. Just about every question was referred to Google, instead of trying to help. Newbie questions were simply not tolerated and 30 to 40 people would jump on the unfortunate guy's case. In some instances I could understand the attitude, especially where it came to Homework, but mostly they went overboard.

I do understand that longstanding members get tired of answering the same questions almost on a daily basis and that some new members are very lazy and do not read FAQ's or search the forum or Google for that matter.

For me personally it feels if I understand better if I can talk to some one that have a better understanding than I do and that I can ask follow up questions. This approach often works better for me than just simply reading a post.

At the OP I just want to say that I do appreciate if someone puts in the time and effort to try and answer for anyone. Even if it wasn't my question, I often follow the thread just pick up knowledge.
If my question was addressed, I would definitely thank you personally and keep you in the loop.
I'm also mindfull of not asking or "reporting back" too much, especially in PM as I'm afraid that the person doesn't want regular feedback or updates.

Difficult to keep everyone happy all of the time.


Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

[PlainName]

Whilst it's easy to assume the google is to blame, I think it is more systemic than that. I am more of the opinion that people don't associate what they see on a screen with other  real people, and that's also why we get flame-fests, trolling and behaviour the same people just wouldn't dream of perpetrating with someone they know or meet in real life.

Regarding forum posts/questions, people tend to be regulars in a handful of forums, and if they find some info on a different forum, join to ask something, it is difficult to remember to keep going back (every day? week? maybe next month?) just to see if someone has replied to a post. So the ask-answer-disappera scenario may not be intentional but more happenstance.

<Digression...>
And there is the other side of the coin. You have a query and every google result ends up at the same source. Once, I was trying to discover how to do something pretty low level in code and every search would, sooner or later, end up with the solution "just use the xyz library" (paraphrased).
</Digression>

Personally, I blame the youth of today for being brought up without manners. In a recent job, over 2 years some colleagues never said 'please' or 'thank you' once, regardless of one's efforts in helping them. It's just the way the world is now.

[GreyWoolfe]

Personally, I blame the youth of today for being brought up without manners. In a recent job, over 2 years some colleagues never said 'please' or 'thank you' once, regardless of one's efforts in helping them. It's just the way the world is now.

VERY old school here.  I was raised to be polite.  You may get away once without please, then I will ask for the magic word.  You may get away once not saying thank you.  I will then say you're welcome to silence.  If the hint isn't taken, no please, no thank you, no help--practice your Google-Fu, grasshopper.

By the way, a very big THANK YOU to all who assist on the eevBlog.  I understand what you do as I do the same helping new ham radio operators get their feet under themselves.  If anyone here has helped me along the way and I have been remiss in saying please and thank you, I beg forgiveness.

[CatalinaWOW]

I don't disagree totally with any of the prior comments, but would point out that throughout my life - from the times when I was helping fix the neighbors TV through today when answering questions on forums much of the motivation has been my own pleasure.  That pleasure is mine whether I have been thanked for the effort or not.  And frequently is more than enough reward.

The key thing is that our contributions in these fields are purely voluntary, and if they become tedious it is perfectly acceptable to stop.  To refuse to answer any questions, or to be selective about which ones to answer.  For any reason on earth, from the nature of the question to the personality of the person asking the question. 

All of us are short of complete knowledge and will be asking questions from time to time.  It does pay us all to recognize that adding to the pleasure of answering questions by showing thanks in any number of ways may well extend the range and number of answers available to us.

[Cerebus]

There is no value in blaming Google or internet search engines in general for it because they didn't exist just a short time ago.

Ah, time passes so quickly doesn't it. There is now a whole generation for which the Internet has always been there, and for whom there  have always been mobile phones in the pockets of ordinary people. Alta Vista started in 1995, Google in 1997, twenty two and twenty years ago respectively.

[PlainName]

There is now a whole generation for which the Internet has always been there

That's an important thing to bear in mind, probably. I can remember when getting a datasheet meant phoning up and waiting for snail mail to bear fruit. Then t'intertubes came along and you could get a datasheet just like that. Hoarding those fabulous books was no longer neessary - indeed, I can remember having a wall full of books and datasheets an arm's reach behind me, but it was quicker just to pop up the one from the manufacturers website.

But we've gone past even that now. I suspect that now, to find out how to drive something, one just googles for the right keywords and there's the example code. Is that bad? Maybe not - the rate of innovation is accelerating and that's probably at least partly due to being able to hit the ground running. And that's almost totally down to the likes of Google.