Monday, May 16, 2016

Misc : "Why I Haven’t Fixed Your Issue Yet"

This really resonated with me.

Why I Haven’t Fixed Your Issue Yet

I don't do that much open source work - a bit - but nowhere near as much as I help out on Forums.

I help out on forums because I like to pay something back but it's not my full-time job and I don't get paid for it :-)

I get that you have a critical deadline, that your boss is on your back, that you are close to panic etc. but you are not the only one in the forums and like the writer above, I have to prioritise.

I give preference to those people who have actually tried to solve the problem e.g. they paste the ADFS claims rules that don't work.

People who write "HELP NEEDED" or "CRITICAL" and then leave a description like "Doesn't work" and I need three "answers" to tease out what version they are using against what repository and essentially expect me to do their job for them tend to be at the bottom.

And answers like "Don't have time to understand regex" pretty much guarantee that they will be back next week with another variation of the same problem.

Yes - it's hard but is it not part of your job to understand this stuff?

There are no excuses - there are hundreds of articles, books, Pluralsight etc.
'
Have a read of Jon Skeet's classic Writing the perfect question.

Help me to help you by describing and documenting the problem.

Oh and by the way, it's considered good etiquette to mark the question as answered, give reputation points or whatever if I help solve the problem.

Enjoy!

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