Is there a library article on how to ask a good question in this (and other CSC) forums?

[ChrisNZ]

Which would make the SAS Communities more unfriendly to newbies. Which is probably not a direction to go in.

True. The opposite risk is that knowledgeable people tire of spending too much time trying to get a proper question, and start bothering less.

At the moment, the onus is on highly skilled experts to spend a lot of time on clerical and throw-away work rather than on adding the value they came here to add.

If that goodwill dries up because we don't push basic requirements on help seekers, the community is in much direr straights than anything we can do to "make the SAS Communities more unfriendly to newbies."

This is not happening now (though this thread and others are a sign of impatience), but we should be careful about taking people for granted just because they haven't complained so far. Especially the most valuable people. Their motivation may drop, their interest may shift, their feeling of adding value may become too low.

[ScottBass]

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@ChrisNZ wrote:

Which would make the SAS Communities more unfriendly to newbies. Which is probably not a direction to go in.

True. The opposite risk is that knowledgeable people tire of spending too much time trying to get a proper question, and start bothering less.

At the moment, the onus is on highly skilled experts to spend a lot of time on clerical and throw-away work rather than on adding the value they came here to add.

If that goodwill dries up because we don't push basic requirements on help seekers, the community is in much direr straights than anything we can do to "make the SAS Communities more unfriendly to newbies."

This is not happening now (though this thread and others are a sign of impatience), but we should be careful about taking people for granted just because they haven't complained so far. Especially the most valuable people. Their motivation may drop, their interest may shift, their feeling of adding value may become too low.

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Thanks for all the discussion.  And yeah @PaigeMiller is probably right.  I guess I want a solid, complete library article that I can bookmark, and when a noob posts a question, I can just paste that URL in my reply and move on.

It just seems there are a lot of noobs lately that don't know how to ask a question...I mean literally don't know how to ask a question in an online forum, let alone how to format one.  And as is obvious from my recent attempts at being the "post police", it's getting up my craw (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stick-in-one-s-craw).

They will, with time and experience, learn how to ask a question.  I was there once, too many years ago.  But if they can at least make it easy for me to run their code, that would really be nice.

At the moment, the onus is on highly skilled experts to spend a lot of time on clerical and throw-away work rather than on adding the value they came here to add.

If that goodwill dries up because we don't push basic requirements on help seekers,

Yeah, I'm out.  I need to follow my own signature block.  If I can't paste their code into SAS and have it run without error, I'm off to the next question, even though  I actually like answering questions (when I have the time).  I like the challenge, their questions often help me learn as well, and can be fun - yeah I'm weird that way.

[PaigeMiller]

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@ChrisNZ wrote:

Which would make the SAS Communities more unfriendly to newbies. Which is probably not a direction to go in.

True. The opposite risk is that knowledgeable people tire of spending too much time trying to get a proper question, and start bothering less.

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I'm sure this is happening already. I know I (and probably others) avoid certain people's posts because they have been consistently not complying with simple requests to post data in a certain form, to show the desired output, etc. Or they can't ask a question clearly. And even if it is not one of those people, if I have to ask several times for something to be provided, and its not provided, I usually just drop out of the thread. Its not worth it to me. Another thing that really bothers me is people who do not provide meaningful titles, the title to their post is "SAS" or "Need SAS Help". I skip a lot of those posts, other times I ask the person to go back to their first post and provide a meaningful title, and most of the time that doesn't happen..

At the moment, the onus is on highly skilled experts to spend a lot of time on clerical and throw-away work rather than on adding the value they came here to add.

Yes, good point. It would be nice if more effort was spent by SAS on this task; after all, the forums benefit (which means SAS benefits) if people are expected to comply with certain minimum standards. After all right now we do it, and when we do it, we are helping SAS Communities become a more successful place, which in the long run ought to make SAS a more profitable company, yet there's no reward for us, other than the internal satisfaction that we get when we help someone solve a problem. (And I don't consider it a reward to find out the I have made the jump from "Respected Advisor" to "Bedazzled Advisor")