No conclusion

Spent a bit of time today going through threads, will probaly never get them all read but its interesting,what i have noticed is how many people join ask a question concerning some problem they have but never let any one know if it gets solved.
Hope i haven't done this anywhere,even if they dont want to continue being a member it would be great to hear if there problem gets resolved.

mike

mikew said:

Spent a bit of time today going through threads, will probaly never get them all read but its interesting,what i have noticed is how many people join ask a question concerning some problem they have but never let any one know if it gets solved.
Hope i haven't done this anywhere,even if they dont want to continue being a member it would be great to hear if there problem gets resolved.

Click to expand...

Happens all the time on forums of all kinds; you get a certain percentage of sign ups from people looking for a solution and nothing more.

Once they get what they came for, they're gone.



....

Unfortunately your right. I ran into it "alot" on Blackberry forums I was Mod or Admin on. Sigh.......... one post members are a fact of forum life.

You need to have the volume of people joining to find the members that will stay and contribute i realise that,i have a camping forum and the majority only join to gain knowledge on something then visit infrequently as you say thats forums.

mike

That's why I rarely answer questions from people that don't fill out their profiles. I just know they're there for one reason only....get their questions answered and never to be seen again. I don't have time to waste on those types of "fly bys".

I usually answer just incase some other members can use the answer, and maybe the way I answer will help attract more lasting members because they saw how helpful the forum staff are.

fotojack said:

That's why I rarely answer questions from people that don't fill out their profiles.

Click to expand...

Having read that, may I vent on a personal note regarding a forum scourge? Thank you...

Poster X normally opens a new thread with an issue his camera is having. If we're lucky the specific model might be made known in this opening post but not having that tidibit of information in the OP is the first clue... Anyway, shortly after this opening post numerous specific and open-ended questions from helpful forum-ites start pouring in as we attempt to get a better handle on the situation. These reconnaissance questions are flat out ignored or get a monosyllabic response. Poster X provide us with nothing but the problem itself, can't or won't give the typical, routine information any normal person would provide who is seeking resolution to an issue. As has already been stated, don't bother asking what things they have already tried because your post will be ignored. Soon the whole thread devolves into a Mad-as-a-Hatter guessing game as even more helpful, committed forum-ites jump in trying to help, not realizing what sort of poster they're dealing with. It would be like walking in to your doctors office expecting him to treat you without any idea what your symptoms are, what meds you're taking etc. I don't know if these posters are just your common variety of stupid, or what, but I've developed a "sixth sense" for them, fortunately and have watched more than one such thread appear on Nikonites.

Okay, rant over. I just felt like getting that off my chest.



...

Sometimes people havent turned of mail notifications, so answering/asking if they solved the problem, could remind them of the thread.

Unfortunately, Bill, a lot of people don't really care how helpful we are or aren't. They just want their questions answered and that's it. Most of them don't even bother to crack open their owner manuals. They're looking for the easy way out to figuring out their cameras. My momma always told me to help people that help themselves first. I'm not a mean person....just realistic. I'll give someone the shirt off my back if I feel they really need it. But to those always looking for a hand out instead of a hand up......nope....not gonna happen.

Your likely right! lol So it goes! lol

Well i promise to finalise my should i D300 thread when the decision is made

fotojack said:

Most of them don't even bother to crack open their owner manuals. They're looking for the easy way out to figuring out their cameras. My momma always told me to help people that help themselves first.

Click to expand...

So much this... ^^^

Give me some indication you've done SOMETHING to try and resolve the issue yourself, that you've checked your manual, read some previous posts, searched Google... ANYTHING that shows even the most modest attempt at self-help and I'll bend over backwards to help solve your issue. But come back time after time and just suck up information easily had by taking the tiniest little initiative? That gets old fast. And don't give me that, "b..b..but isn't that why the forums exist, to help people?" As if we're all getting paid to sit here and be your personal tech support line? No...




...

Horoscope Fish said:

So much this... ^^^

Give me some indication you've done SOMETHING to try and resolve the issue yourself, that you've checked your manual, read some previous posts, searched Google... ANYTHING that shows even the most modest attempt at self-help and I'll bend over backwards to help solve your issue. But come back time after time and just suck up information easily had by taking the tiniest little initiative? That gets old fast. And don't give me that, "b..b..but isn't that why the forums exist, to help people?" As if we're all getting paid to sit here and be your personal tech support line? No...




...

Click to expand...

It would be interesting to see if this is a generational/educational thing. So much of this kind of "lazy helplessness" reminds of of high school kids today. Give them an assignment that involves an open-ended question and tell them they can use notes and the text book, they're up at your desk, "I can't find it." I recommend looking in a particular chapter, still can't find it . . . so the easy way out, just copy from the neighboring student, who cares it it's right or honorable . . . sigh.

​I think I've just talked myself out of substituting this year. It just doesn't seem to get better.

I don't post a whole of questions seeking answers. Why? Because I do homework first. Most problems aren't new. They have been answered, probably a number of times, in the forums. Some problems need fresh eyes, so to speak. If I can answer a meager question or two using my experience sure I feel good. I use these forums as a wealth of information at a fair price.

fotojack said:

Most of them don't even bother to crack open their owner manuals. They're looking for the easy way out to figuring out their cameras.

Click to expand...

The one good thing about this is that if someone else has the same question, they find the answer by doing a search, nikonites comes up, then we get a new visitor who could potentially start to participate. It's even better if they see that there is a good community here and that person was helped.

Would it help if we had a system to mark a thread as answered and have the OP choose the best answer? There are several modifications out there to do this. I believe they can send out notifications to tell the person to pick a best answer if they don't do it within an allotted time period. Here is one of them

However, we would run into an issue with the different types of threads that are created. Generally they fall into 3 categories:

• Informational threads
• Questions
• Pictures

They would have to be specifically marked as a question for a question/answer type system to work.

I myself when i visit other forums, I tell them about nikonites. I try to get them too join and stay awhile.

This is one reason I post a generic welcome to the forum. It asks them to fill out their profile and it give them links to the user manuals and tutorials. I shoot the D5100 so my posts have specific links there to the user guides.

I have noticed that the search engine for the forum sometimes does not give good answers to the search so I generally don't bug people about that to much here.

When I have questions I go to Google first and exhaust that and then to this forum and go to the specific part of the forum and look at titles. Last resort is asking the question here. Sometimes a process does not register with me no matter how much work I have done to figure it out but someone here that may use it all the time can tell me in a way that make sense and then I can fly with it.

I try to remember this last part when dealing with people here but at least do your part by filling out your profile so I don't have to reread your first post to see what camera you have.

Also the location. We had a person recently that was incensed that we would even ask that and told me it was none of our business and we did not need to know that to answer his question. I does help to know. You may be from a different country and English is not your native language. If you do not quite make sense to me and I see that you are German I might phrase things a little different to make it clearer to you. Also in equipment you may not be able to buy the same way I can. Knowing where you are can change an answer. I don't need your Street address but at least the country and maybe the State.

Off my Soap box now .

I was just noticing this in a thread about an exposure issue, I actually found the answer but since the OP seems to have abandoned the thread, I didn't bother to update. lol - I figure posting in some question threads is sort of like X-mas, It's about the giving itself - not what you get in return... sometimes i guess im not in the christmas spirit.

A lot depends on how long a member has been answering questions on the forum,it must get a little tiring at times, especially if its a question that can be easily answered with research.Its often a good thing though if it gets a new member posting,it was more the lack of conclusion that i was talking about.

Yes after answering the exact same question over and over it sure can cause you to get burned out on some questions. I eventually just posted the most common info always asked for in a sticky thread and just posted a link when asked that question. "how to download a blackberry theme OTA" was my burn out question. lol