>>Consider these things, Al. Even here on a technical forum, complacency and laziness can enter in. I see a lot of posts with a comment like, "I wrote a paper about that fifteen years ago... go read it here," rather than reaching out a true hand of a solution a person can receive and use. We need more people giving people that true hand of a solution rather than just a nudge in the right direction.
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>You think that's laziness. I see it as offering a person documentation that was carefully crafted and edited and can go into a topic in much greater depth than I'm likely to do in a single forum post. I've spent 30 years writing about Fox. I've chosen to share much of it with the public for free and you call it laziness. Wow!

I see it as having put in lots of labor and worked with and for people over many years, and then in the later years referring back to your prior labor without contributing much new labor. And while your prior work assists people, and the documentation that's there is a legacy standard that can be referred to, it's definitely a more static, cold, unconnected, impersonal reply than would be a link to the code, and a working example, or a partial framework of a working example.

This is not a big issue for me, but something I've noted when I've seen various posts only referring back to prior existing work, and especially so when it's in written form (like a website or PDF).

>As for "true hand of a solution" vs. "a nudge in the right direction," I know that I learn a lot more from that nudge and the work that follows than from being handed a complete solution. You now, teach a man to fish rather than giving him a fish.

I believe in giving people code to handle what they need, and in that way they can learn from a working example. If a pattern of use and abuse persists from an individual, then you change your replies a little, but the help is offered initially upon asking.

I also believe in guiding people toward the solution without hand-feeding it to them at times. It depends on the situation, and upon many factors with discernment / intuition being a major one.