Mind Reading and Cryptic Posts

[JohnnyMalaria]

Or on the opposite end you have well described posts that noone reads fully and posts replies that have already been answered in the first post.
Example:
Thread: "fixing something"
OP: "i tried turning it off and back on again and it didn't work"
Reply: "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

That made me laugh!!     That happens a lot in real life too...
I remember many years ago when I looked after prison security systems, (et-al !), and had a call once from a
control room saying that a screen wasn't working. I said, did you look at the switch at the back??  (Yep, Off). 
I was in a humorous mood once when a client called, saying "The vertical hold on Monitor-x is not working!!".
I said... "Turn the Monitor on it's side and adjust the Horizontal hold!!"... quiet on the line... OK, i then fixed it !! 

I was admitted to hospital for concussion many years ago. While waiting for the doctor, I was told I could watch TV in the day room but that there was only sound and no picture. It had been that way for ages and was waiting to be fixed. So, I turned the brightness up...

After my eventual exam, I was released with an "unremarkable brain" comment on my record. Remarkable enough to fix your TV, though

[magic]

I think before new members are allowed to change their profile picture they should pass a simple test and before they pass that test their profile picture would display "NOOB" (or whatever) in big bold letters 

Already here

Posts: 1

[floobydust]

Just tried the basic EE test on Elektrotanya... I got 1 wrong [...]

I give a basic 10 question test to EE job applicants, part of the interview. You'd be surprised how many can't calculate a resistor value for an LED, or know op-amp gain equations from memory, despite bragging about all that they've done.
The test results do show who's got a basic level of competency.

[fourfathom]

Does anyone know of some online EE quizzes?  I find it valuable to test myself occasionally, lest my already-swollen ego reach dangerous levels.

And regarding n00bz and their mal-formed questions, I'm in favor of welcoming them to the party.  Learning how to ask a good question is associated with learning how to effectively analyze a problem, and that's a skill worth coaching.  So don't be nasty, there's too much of that going on.  Obvious trolls should be ignored, but I've made good friends of some newcomers who were at first suspected (by the more cynical of us) of being trolls.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Whilst I understand how annoying it is reading bizarre threads, I think many are not realizing that the question askerer is so frustrated that they went though the sign up process and after that, face the conundrum of what information to provide and at which level of verbosity.

Chicken and egg problem. If they knew what was causing the problem, they would likely know which information to volunteer. I have watched the fora question problem for 20 years.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

[rsjsouza]

Ed, this is one of the best references for fora arund the web. Too bad that an insignificat part of people actually read it.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Ed, this is one of the best references for fora arund the web. Too bad that an insignificat part of people actually read it.

The joke of it is, I'm the worst!

 

"Why won't this @#$%%ing thing work?!?" 

[tggzzz]

Ed, this is one of the best references for fora arund the web. Too bad that an insignificat part of people actually read it.

Raymond's post has become too long over the decades.

I occasionally point people to https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/library-2/good-questions-pique-our-interest-and-dont-waste-our-time-2/

I also occasionally complement newbies on the quality of their question

[schmitt trigger]

I think before new members are allowed to change their profile picture they should pass a simple test and before they pass that test their profile picture would display "NOOB" (or whatever) in big bold letters 

Similar to the high voltage warning signs!

[edy]

I've been guilty of this too... but all too often you start a post asking about something and then by the time you are finished, you've found the answer, and then not wanting to erase all your hard-earned mental purging, you hit the "POST" button. This is like when teachers ask you to "show your work" during math, instead of just giving the answer, but in this case you use a forum like a scratch-pad for your brain, which is not all that easy to understand to anyone but yourself.   


[UPDATE:]

I successfully passed (100%) the Elektrotanya test I retook today (last time I got 80%). They changed most of the questions. Four were fairly easy, then I got a bit stumped on the last... a picture of a schematic and asked whether it was a horizontal section of a CRT, audio tone amplifier circuit or power supply to an appliance. The question pool is interesting, it's broad but not too heavy on the math. Fun to take and work the brain a bit for hobbyists like me who do not have any formal training in the field but rely on reading many books on the subject to learn.