Where did all the helpful people go?

[too much information]

I don't know if it is just me, but it seems more and more that new people (or people new at something) will ask a question and get a google-slap or some other less than helpful answer.

It's happened to me as well, you search for your answer all morning, post that you have searched and ask your question only to get a link to a google search.

Where did all of the helpful people go? I still try to help people who are trying to learn ASP or other things that I know about. I found lots of help here when I was learning ASP, but I'm having a rough time finding help with PHP and htaccess questions lately.

I'm not suggesting that people should be able to come here and have their code written for them, but sometimes a little bit of help can really get someone going, and once that help is 'on the record' it's much easier for the next person to find that help by searching.

Have all the coders moved on, are we all search promotion junkies now?

[mattglet]

Recently, I've seen a lot of "do it for me" in the ASP forum. Now, I have no problem helping others out (as MANY others here have helped me), but blatent requests from people to write their whole site gets annoying.

I sometimes question whether or not people have actually searched for themselves to try to get certain answers. There are literally MILLIONS of pages out there that show you how to set up a connection string, retrieve form submission values, store into a database, etc. Yet they still come here and have "do it for me" requests (many posts from the same person requesting a DIFM, when they've moved on to a different part of their code). Enough of my rant.

[albo]

I don't know where all the "helpful" people went, but I scan the forms regularly, and as a new member, I hope to add help whenever I feel I have something of value to add (Mark Twain: it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear foolish than open it and remove all doubt...)

[cmatcme]

I'm fairly new and I try to help people.

If you don't belive me, here's an example of one my posts [webmasterworld.com] which I think is helpful.

Please tell me if it isn't.

[too much information]

I'm not saying there are no helpful people, and I know those 'do it for me' people get anoying, but it seems like I hit so many threads now where someone just gives a complete non-answer.

I was just wondering if anyone else noticed. I still get great answers, and try to give some as well, but I don't remember seeing as many non-answers in the past.

[oddsod]

TMI, I believe they are there in the same numbers as they always used to be but the dynamics of WW has changed, there's a lot more noise, a lot more of the do-it-for-me posts as described earlier and a wider range of webmasters of differing skills and cultures. People who are predisposed towards helping find threads asking the same question they answered two days ago (see the Adsense and Google forums), lame questions from people who haven't even bothered to state the issue properly - my site is crashing - does anyone know why?. It gets tiring after a while. People now bookmark/flag threads just so they can refer others to them when common questions come up again and again!

[Brett_Tabke]

TMI - they are all over here :-)
[webmasterworld.com...]

[grandpa]

ask your question only to get a link to a google search

Guilty! That, or a link to the PHP site. I'll do that sort of thing for a couple or reasons.

my understanding of the solution is weak, and I can't explain the details.

I'm in some sort of big hurry (but still had time to review the forums here..)

the posters intitals contain the letters T, M or I
(ok, the last was an attempt at humor)

I'm working on something now for the PHP forum. We'll see if it ever sees the light of day. For me, it's all about giving back what I've been given. All the coders have not left the building, some have 'real work' they need to devote time to as well. On a different day the same question might elicit a completely different type of response.

[Mohamed_E]

TMI,

I suppose the degree of helpfulness varies by forum.

A few weeks ago I had a nagging HTML/CSS problem, and posted a question on the CSS forum. Next day, as I had expected, I found a detailed explanation of the problem and its solution posted by SuzyUK. Not merely a solution to my problem, but a lot of specific pointers to the relevant standards. So I got both a solution to my problem and a valuable tutorial.

I, for one, am not complaining :)

[cooldoug]

Hey, if you try to ask your webhost the things people ask in here, they won't know what you are talking about. Be glad that you are getting some help:)

[eurotrash]

I would like to put forward that the RSS forum [google.com] always seems to look after their visitors. Thanks Werty.

[cmatcme]

I suppose we're just getting a new kind of help and in different places. New people come in with different talents and skills and older members leave with theirs.

It's like evolution.