Explanation Required – Expect it during forum participation
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On occasion, I have a need to use forums to find out information that I can’t find myself. I have memberships to many forums, ranging from personal hobbies to forums that pertain to my job.
When I go to a forum, it’s because I have searched already for the information in either the application help file or have done and exhaustive Google search and have not found what I need. When I go to a forum I have the expectation of having someone help me and explain to me what I seek.
I went to a forum yesterday to get some assistance on VBA code writing for Outlook 2007. The person that was trying to help me pointed me to this reference and that reference, but never once tried to explain anything to me. I don’t have any understanding of VBA code whatsoever: the commands and what they do, etc. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to read lengthy books or experiment in trying to get it to work with trial and error. I don’t know what the commands mean, but was trying to find a way to accomplish a couple tasks that could not be accomplished any other way. All I wanted was explanation.
The person that was trying to assist me wouldn’t explain anything. All they kept providing me with was links to look at this code or that code to see what the author had done. I tried explaining to them that looking at the code does me no good if I have no understanding of what the code accomplishes.
Finding things like this on public forums has become the norm as of late. People want to give you tons of links, but don’t want to take the time to try and explain anything to you, in detail. If you are going to participate in a forum, or even run one of your own, then expect to have to explain things to people: not just point them to references that they cannot possibly understand with their limited knowledge.
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