Slow down, newbs!

I hate it when I'm trying to answer one of your Qs, but you all go an delete your post -- topic disappears -- repo 404 -- me left wondering why I was bothering...
Maybe they found the solution on their own and decided that the thread is useless.
What Catfish666 said. Also, their posts may have been reported. I've noticed a lot of homework threads have been reported instead of answered lately. Same with posts, some are getting reported even after getting replies so they are getting removed. Posts with answers can't be deleted after getting replied to last I knew.
Catfish666 wrote:
Maybe they found the solution on their own and decided that the thread is useless.

But all constructive posts must be really there. When I have a doubt today and post it to get it in my head, the same post may help someone with the same doubt tomorrow.

Albatross had also written an excellent article about this if I remember right.

Duoas wrote:
I hate it when I'm trying to answer one of your Qs, but you all go an delete your post -- topic disappears -- repo 404 -- me left wondering why I was bothering...

True, maybe users must be cautioned not to delete their threads or posts. Why I myself got reported(I really admit it was a humble mistake) once cause I tried to help a user with a program and he gave up without even bothering much. But I never deleted my posts.
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The illusionist mirage wrote:
True, maybe users must be cautioned not to delete their threads or posts.

As I pointed out, once someone replies you can't delete the thread or post. All you can do after that is just edit it make it blank or add things to it. If they are deleted after someone replies, it means someone reported it and had it removed. You can only delete the thread/post if no one replies to it.
I don't think they are talking about about deleting threads after someone has posted... The way Duoas's post made it sound is that he was getting 404 messages meaning the whole thread is no longer available which means the poster deleted his post (Which in turn deleted the thread) and the page no longer exists.
True, but I'm assuming he is referring to the ones lately that have been homework related questions. Lately, I've noticed to that members have been reporting a lot of threads just because they seek help for homework. I've reported a few where the user flatout said they didn't care about doing it themselves then posted the assignment and asked for us to write it. Admin deleting them and the user deleting it both give a 404 so I'm just speculating based off recent threads I've notice disappearing.
My bugbear is when you help someone find a solution and they edit the original post.

Think I was peeved enough to find a cached copy one time and post the original post back there myself.
My OP was because I read a post, spent a few minutes formulating a reply (complete with functional and tested example code), and when I hit "Submit" it 404ed because OP had deleted the posting. (Perhaps we were too slow?)

I disagree with the current attitude some of us have developed against people posting for help with homework. The same questions are asked over and over and over again, with nice spikes around University autumn and spring semesters. This is the way it always has been and always will be. And I think it a bit disingenuous to disdain people for doing what we all had to do to get to the point of knowing something about anything at all -- ask questions, oblivious to the 'obvious' answers. Even a 'simple' google search is a skill that takes some time to be able to do proficiently.

That's why I'm (still) writing the FAQ -- to make easy questions easy to answer. (I have far less time than I would like to devote to it, though, so it is going slowly.)

So, we see, ungracious behavior is manifest by both the newbs and those who know better. And it is equally frustrating both ways.

What drives me especially bonkers is when you give someone a reasonable reply and that someone becomes rude because he/she didn't like the reply. Correct or not, any reply endeavoring to help deserves sufficient gratitude not to abuse those offering help.

Several cents worth of my thoughts on the matter...
Duoas wrote:
What drives me especially bonkers is when you give someone a reasonable reply and that someone becomes rude because he/she didn't like the reply. Correct or not, any reply endeavoring to help deserves sufficient gratitude not to abuse those offering help.

I agree. Another one is when someone posts a solution, but then that person gets mad if a person posts an alternate solution.
Duoas wrote:
I disagree with the current attitude some of us have developed against people posting for help with homework.
When OP posts nothing aside copypasted assigment without even bothering to say what his problem is, I do not even want to start helping them. I think, most people dislike homewok question because they are often like that: "Here is an assigment, write it for me".
I'll usually just ignore posts like that.

There's no point in going out of my way to be mean.
I'm not sure if the problem is with students posting homework questions because as you mentioned this has probably always happened since the site started and will most likely continue for long to come... But even in the very short time I've been here (in comparison to some of you veterans) I seem to notice that those who are asking beginner questions are kind of getting lazier.

We used to have, "Okay I've got this task and I've tried this but I can't get it working, it's supposed to do this, can you see where I've gone wrong please?" but we've been getting more of "How do I do this?".

So okay we still used to have a fair amount of the "How do I do this" posts but then a lot of us would guide rather than tell the poster, and we'd ask more detailed questions to get them to think about why things work and such. But now when we try to guide people into thinking about it themselves there seems to be not that many people who care, they just want the answer, and then they'll post there next question in a weeks time.

Maybe this is just me becoming more impatient and judgmental on newbies because of this particular crowd.
The illusionist mirage wrote:
Albatross had also written an excellent article about this if I remember right.


http://www.cplusplus.com/articles/oGLN8vqX/
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