In
Mike Brannigan said:
Ken,
If all the answers to all the questions were available then yes we
would not need newsgroups like this.
But the answers *are* all (or almost all) available. My point was
that none of us dispenses secret information that only we have.
It's all documented somewhere. Where did we get the knowledge we
have? We got it reading books, frequenting newsgroups like this
one, doing Google searches, looking at the Microsoft Knowledge
Base, etc.--the same places that others could do their research
in.
This would be the ideal situation if all persons answered all the
questions they had from existing information sources.
However this is not the case. What is true is that the majority of
questions you find in these groups could have been answered if the
original poster had looked in one of the common sources of help.
Such as Help and Support etc.
True. If not literally all, then the vast majority of, questions
can be answered by doing research, rather than asking someone
else. But as I say in point 1. below, the ability to do affective
research is not a skill that everyone possesses.
If these persons helped themselves to the answers to simple questions
it would leave more bandwidth for those with more complex less obvious
questions.
I don't like to see bandwidth wasted either, but from a practical
point of view, the bandwidth here is essentially unlimited. One
person's using some of it does not make less available for
someone else.
I answer lots of questions here, and many of them are questions
I've answered many times before. To save time I cut and paste
when I can, and write new text when I can't. I don't complain
about someone's asking an old question. I just provide an answer
when I'm able to. Besides not having the research skills, many
people who ask aren't even aware of what opportunities for
research there are. I just help when I can and don't berate
someone for not using resources he probably didn't even know
existed.
The real issue here is that people just will not do anything in many
cases to help themselves and would rather post a question and wait
for an answer.
And if my wife would help herself to the answers to simple
questions (which are as available to her as they are to the folks
here), she wouldn't waste my time answering her. She doesn't do
it herself for two reasons:
1. She's not skilled at looking for and finding answers. Contrary
to what many people think, even when answers are available,
knowing where and how to find them is a skill that not everyone
possesses. As a single example, if you don't know what something
is called, it's very hard to do a web search on it.
2. She knows that I'm glad to help her when I can, and at the
expense of a few minutes of my time, I can often save many
minutes of her time.
In my view, most of the people who come here asking questions
aren't very different from my wife. The same two reasons are
applicable in most of their cases: they are not skilled at doing
research, and I'm glad to help them when I can.
