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Message
From
31/07/2012 15:48:57
 
 
To
31/07/2012 13:58:20
General information
Forum:
Visual FoxPro
Category:
Other
Environment versions
Visual FoxPro:
VFP 9 SP2
OS:
Windows XP SP2
Network:
Windows 2000 Server
Database:
Visual FoxPro
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01549566
Message ID:
01549593
Views:
100
>I seriously consider to carefully select to whom I provide help in the future.
>
>I see more and more cases where people ask the same question here and on other FoxPro forums, but never give any feedback whether my answer was helpful or not. And they never say thank you as if they take free help for granted.
>
>I want to help people, I really do, but when people are too arrogant, cheap or lazy to say thank you, I feel taken advantage of, and now enough is enough. I am tempted to publicize a list of whom I have in mind, but I will refrain from doing so. However, I may answer some of these people with a reference to this message in the future, to let them know how I feel.

I think I keep a subconscious score for everyone, about whether they are lazy and/or closed-minded/stubborn. If that score gets too high, I don't help them any more, I don't want to encourage that behaviour.

Failing to thank someone who has helped you is a (to my mind) fairly minor instance of laziness.

Failing to follow at least the highlights of Eric Raymond's guide ( http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html ) on how to ask for help in the first place is much worse.

Then there are people who are reasonably technically astute, ask an involved question, and post reams of code, but are too folding lazy to trace said code in the debugger.

Closed-mindedness: these are people who know the suggestion or answer you've given can't be right, so they don't even bother testing it in their environment. I've been involved in some threads here like that which have turned out to be quite embarrassing for the OPs.

It's worth pointing out that a forum like this is not like real life, you don't personally know most of the people with whom you interact and it tends to be impersonal. Rules of etiquette are open to individual interpretation. If you post on a forum and expect to be thanked (or at least acknowledged) you should probably be prepared for the possibility that it won't happen.
Regards. Al

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." -- Isaac Asimov
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right." -- Isaac Asimov

Neither a despot, nor a doormat, be

Every app wants to be a database app when it grows up
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