'Vorporeal' said:
So yeah, before you get on our case about being "elitist assholes", you should try looking at the situation from our standpoint.
I do hear what you're saying in your post, I agree with some of it. But, you basically said what I was trying to get at in the very end of your post. Instead of seeing the bad in the newbie, look at it from their point of view. Maybe I'm biased cause I work at a help desk and I get alot of clueless people calling. For which I find an answer for them. But if I didn't care about a question they had or I had or thought it to be stupid, I would basically just ignore it, or say I didn't know. Not answering them would get them impatient and they would eventually dig deeper and find their answer if it was in fact, that easy to find. Replying and scaring the newbie away hopefully isn't what you want, but I can guarantee what's happening. You guys have been here, you're not going anywhere, the newbie just got here, more of a chance he won't be coming back. Look at it from their point of view. Empowering is much better than humiliating
We don't reply in the nasty way that we sometimes do because we feel like a question is stupid. We reply that way when people haven't done any research and are just coming to us because they have a question and they know that we can answer it for them. They're often terribly spoiled, and have grown up with people who answer their questions and attend to their needs and don't realize that it doesn't work that way in the real world. Trust me - I had the same problem the first time I posted on a forum. Unlike many of our newbies though, I quickly learned my lesson. Even some _slightly_ more complicated things like asking if a certain game can be ported are often met with hostility because there is a thread at the top of the forum saying "PORTS REQUIRE SOURCE CODE". Maybe it should also explain that they have to also use OpenGL and not DirectX and maybe a few other things, but some of the questions that are asked in this vein are still ludicrous. The answers might not be painfully easy to find, but there are definitely tools they can use to look for answers. There's the whole Information Index, the search feature, etc. If they spend 5 minutes searching, they'll either find the answer, find part of the answer, or just be able to post a thread and say "I searched the forums for blah blah blah, there were no helpful results, could someone tell me the answer to this question?". As you said, we've been here for a long time, and we know a lot about the Pandora. We're not going to just answer worthless questions though. Imagine if you went up to a college professor and asked them to answer a basic question about the course material? They'd laugh at you, and tell you to go do the textbook reading. Then, if you still didn't understand, you'd go back to the professor or go talk to a TA or another student. We're doing the same thing. We want at least some semblance of effort to find the answers on their own before spending our time (small or not) helping them out. Otherwise, we just promote bad habits. They'll stick around (thanks to our answering their question), and will not have learned their lesson - they'll likely continue to post thoughtless questions so that they can get a quick answer without putting in any time trying to find the answer. This forum is to other forums (like PSP modding/hacking forums) like college is to high school. You don't get pampered anymore - this is the real world. Grow up and take some initiative.
(The last part wasn't directed at you - it was directed at the newbs who we're discussing.)
