Top 10 Ways To Not Get An Answer

I've been here for two months and answered over 400 questions. I'm seeing a pattern here, and I have decided to post the best ways to make sure you are never answered.

10) Blood, sweat, and tears are for losers. Spend no time figuring things out on your own.

9) Announce almost ceremoniously that you have no VBA experience.

8) Fail to use the search functions of this forum.

7) Try to put every example you're given into a macro.

6) Believe that this is the only source for answers, because Access Help provides nothing. Nothing, I tell you!

5) Have us write your homework for you and then complain when you don't understand it.

4) Post in German.

3) Have a belief that your particular problem is the most important issue ever, and post in every sub-forum possible. Then bump it.

2) Be vague, and then be belligerent.

1) Have no appreciation for the people that are answering your questions in the first place.

I know this sounds cold and mean and otherwise uncaring, but we are here to answer questions, not give you fish, as it were. This is a place to say, "I've done most of the work, but I need help over this hump," not "I have this crazy project/idea and I want you to write it for me."

I've written over a dozen example DBs for people, and I know that I know what I'm doing. But, myself along with perhaps the majority of others that answer the majority of the questions, I'm asking on their behalf to please take the time to figure some of this out. If you can't do VBA, you are using 25% maybe of Access. If you can't understand your own DB, then asking us to fix it is a solution, but not a learning opportunity for you. If you can't understand what I'm getting at, it's that so many posts are the same.

Again, I'm not trying to be an ass, but if you want to be a decent Access programmer and a programmer in general, then please, take the time to learn it. There are plenty of books (look at the bottom of this forum) and there are plenty of resources. I don't think any of us are teachers by trade, but the best teacher for something like programming is always trial and error.

Programming is a language, a passion, a "something you figure out" if you will. If you're spoon-fed the entire time, you don't learn.

I will continue to answer as I always do and I apologize if anyone was offended, but jeez, make sure you've tried everything offline before asking for help. And don't forget to search first, both here and Google.

Sorry for the long read.

Amen Moniker and ditto.

This forum should not be utilized as an avenue for home-work assignments PERIOD!

Regards
Mark

I concur with this.

Words of wisdom

Moniker,

Very well put. To be honest I don't respond to too many of these posts because a very LARGE percentage of the topics have been answered time and time again. A simple search of this forum, a little leg work, and time would allow many of these questions to be solved by the individual.

I certainly do appreciate the talents of the individuals that take time out of their schedules to answer the posts. I have learned a great deal from all these talented programmers.

Many thanks.

Rickster57 said:

Moniker,

Very well put. To be honest I don't respond to too many of these posts because a very LARGE percentage of the topics have been answered time and time again. A simple search of this forum, a little leg work, and time would allow many of these questions to be solved by the individual.

I certainly do appreciate the talents of the individuals that take time out of their schedules to answer the posts. I have learned a great deal from all these talented programmers.

Many thanks.

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Well said Rickster57
I remember getting wound up after I saw a member who had been helped post a reply the stated "WHERE'S THE CODE" and I do get the feeling that a number of people are just after a quick solution and can't be bothered to do any of the ground work.

I'm always being helped and to be honest the monitor would have gone out the window by now if I hadn't been helped out of a hole or two thanks to those who help.

mick

My personal bugbear is people who put 'Help' or 'urgent' in the thread title. Yes, it's obvious you are after help since you are posting to the forum and no, it's not urgent. To you it may be but when the advice is free you'll take it when you get it and nobody will drop what they are doing just to service you. If you have a problem describe it in the thread title. It's no wonder people (those that try, anyway) can't find historical solutions when the threads are all 'total noob needs urgent help plz', or whatever.

I also agree with moniker plus I dislike it if the solution has been complex and you ask "does this work?" but get no feed back. One thing I would say, and this may be my own inadequacy, but I don't find the search facility here very user friendly. I've had occassions when I know a topic has been covered but still cannot find the post. As I said it might be me.

Brian

Brianwarnock said:

I also agree with moniker plus I dislike it if the solution has been complex and you ask "does this work?" but get no feed back. One thing I would say, and this may be my own inadequacy, but I don't find the search facility here very user friendly. I've had occassions when I know a topic has been covered but still cannot find the post. As I said it might be me.

Brian

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I find the harderst thing about Access is trying to describe what I need to do rather than the actual db work itself

Having a problem & knowing how to describe it in a thread is just as hard as the work itself & in some cases even harder

I spend most of my time here using the search functions & it's great when I strike gold & find a thread that helps me without me having to ask the question again.

This Forum is one of the best things I ever found on the internet

Groundrush's comment is significant, gang.

Searching the forum works when you are looking for help with, say, "Security" or "Inventory" as a topic. But the many places where you would have need to see info on "Cascading Combo Boxes" or "Missing References" don't give you that bang-zoom recognition of what you should search for.

My own personal preference is to read enough of the problem to see if I know we've answered before. If so, I reply, "Please search the forums for topic thus-and-such." If not, I'll see if I can recall something similar. (My memory is like a steel trap... rusted shut.) My site's rules about large downloads and anything that could include code makes it difficult or impossible to download anything anyway, so I don't try to do that. The final filter I apply is whether the question makes sense in words.

My own bete noir is trying to communicate with someone whose IQ is just above (or comparable to) a box of rocks. I guess that makes me an elitest or something like that. But it is the particularly obtuse and dense seekers of erudition that lead me to eructation.

I can usually tell when the problem is language, not IQ, and make allowances for that. But HOLY GUACAMOLE, do I hate having to explain to people that Access is no different than any other programming tool. DESIGN first, IMPLEMENT second. Even in a Rapid Applications Development environment, that is true. It is just that the design phase is shorter for RAD environments. Not non-existant, just shorter.

The_Doc_Man said:

But it is the particularly obtuse and dense seekers of erudition that lead me to eructation.

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lol...

I may have to add that to my signature.

I think what prompted my initial 4am post was that I saw very, very similar questions posted in the forum within hours of each other, each with the same basic answer, and each which had been answered at least 10 times in the past week.

I do agree that searching in here is sometimes hit and miss, but I'm also of the belief that some of the erudition seekers have only seen something sort of like what they want, and then that gets described. There's never been an attempt to recreate it. Some seem to get stuck for 15 minutes and give up. And that's what is frustrating. When I started programming in the early 1980s, there wasn't an Internet to turn to for help. (We had BBSes though!) I got frustrated, read a lot, tried every avenue I could think of, and eventually figured it out.

I'm not going to make a "back in the day" speech (I'm only in my 30s), but it certainly seems like there are far more lazy people looking for a quick fix rather than people looking to enhance their own knowledge. It's more "you write this for me and I'll be happy" than "help me understand why this doesn't work". That's the frustration point. It's like giving the homeless guy in front of the liquor store a dollar because he says he needs it for bus fare. You know damn well he's just going to buy a beer, but sometimes you give him the dollar anyway. But over time, if the same homeless guy is "waiting for a bus" over and over again in the same place, it gets old quickly.

Right on ..... that's exactly why I stopped posting a few months ago.

Multiple posts of the same question can get people ignored as well!

Peter

I would like to share my thoughts about the community here, as a VBA novice.

Some of you might think I am one of those that you 'spoon fed', but I hope not. I have on occassion made a post after trying to find a solution to a problem for some time, then to only find it once I have submitted my post.

Half the time it is very difficult, when you dont know the 'technical terms' to find what it is you are looking for, that applies for both here, and within Access's built in help. I know that I have suffered from that time and time again. I find searches where ever they are so difficult, as one person writing a 'how-to' on how to 'calculate the difference of two dates' might end up being searched for 'work out the gap between dates'. The trouble with the internet as a whole is the language differences all over the world. Here we have 'boots' in our cars, over the pond they have 'trunks'.

I have come on a long way since joining here, and its all down to the 'access veterans, and 'experts' that have helped with my personal development of VBA. I am now able to write much more of the tasks I need my database to carry out in VBA rather than trying futily to write macros, 'as that was all I knew'. Hell, I am even using some VBA in excel and word!

I still find programming daunting, but I know that there is a place that I can go for some help to find the light at the end of the tunnel when I get stuck. That place is this place.

The help I have recieved over the few months I have been here has been imense, I know I have not helped people back equally, but I have tried to help where I can remembering the problems they face now, when I faced them back a few months ago and remembering how frustrating it was, and as I am learning everyday, eventually I might be able to help others like I have been helped.

I want to say a big thanks to all here who make this my first stop for anything related to access.

Being a bit of a leaner myself - I total agree - first port of call
figure the problem out - idfentify the problem

then write out the answer
see how far you can get - then when you fall over
check samples - i have found the answer to 90% of my simple problems in the samples
assume 100 problems
90% of which i have figured out the hard way (and learnt from it) the remain 10 need to understand - check samples
this then should hopeful reduce this to 1 or 2 problems and even these are sometimes being too close tot he problem to see the solution

I have found the forum to be very helpful and I have learnt from it and try to help others along the way trying to deal with the more simplist problems and leave the complex ones to those with the knowledge

If we stopped, thought and then asked what we are after it might make everyones life easier (although on occassion I am just as guilty of not doing this)

But thumbs up on this orginal post - well crafted , clear and to the point (which is more than muy rabbles)

g

here, here
I was one of the poster in the 'WHERE'S THE CODE' Post.

I learn't programming in the 70's, mainframes, punched cards etc, and I am just amazed that people know so little about Access and Programming. One of the problems is that Access is treated as another component of Office. So If you can use a spreadsheet you can use Access can't ya.
Access should never have been bundled with Office as now every man and his dog is a database developer.

I left the last forum because of this very point. People want you to do homework for them. Or they want a complex database developed for them. They ask the same question week after week after week. They obviously do not have the problem solving mindset I have as most problems I sort out from the Help System or from experimentation/Trial and error.

When I was learning Java I spent 36 hours on one line of code until I understood it.

RichardP1978 said:

I find searches where ever they are so difficult, as one person writing a 'how-to' on how to 'calculate the difference of two dates' might end up being searched for 'work out the gap between dates'. The trouble with the internet as a whole is the language differences all over the world. Here we have 'boots' in our cars, over the pond they have 'trunks'.

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I'm all for forum based folksonomy when such problems as this could potentially arrive. Search features aren't the best as they tend to be rigid regarding literal searches. On my history forum I added Zoints Tags which allows people to add a line of separate descriptive words to each thread which can be searched.

I would like to see that here as those more in the know could tag threads they come across with proper terms which would sit nicely alongside terms by the less initiated.

All the posts here I basically agree with.

I do not do homework for others
I actually try to avoid giving total solutions. Point in the right direction and send them on a learning experience.

Help and Urgent are total turnoffs

"I will get the sack" is equally ignored. They probably deserve it

Accurate concise subject with accurate description of problem with sufficient background is the way to get people respopnding.

Finally

Give some feedback. It is very difficult to give advice when it is not your own database. The advisor cannot see all the relationships etc.

So when you get some good stuff respond back. It will be appreciated
L

One of my favorite threads I ever saw in an MS Access forum was started by a student who was obviously seeking someone to do his/her homework. One of the immediate responses was something along the lines of "I am a Microsoft Access instructor. This sounds much like a homework assignment I handed out earlier this evening, and if I find out that you are one of my students who received this assignment, I will fail you. No discussion." Amazingly, the originator of the thread made no more posts.

I think the point about newbies not knowing the correct search terms to use is completely valid. I know that, in the beginning, I was chronically lacking the correct vocabulary. I have learned a whole heck of a lot since then thanks to the patience of many here. I also know I have a lot of learning left to go.

In return, I have done my best to try to answer questions from novice posters where I thought I could help. My hope is that this both helps the poster, and reduces the workload on the more knowlegable people on this board who have helped me.

I have to say, feedback goes a long way to engendering goodwill on my part. It would also be nice if more folks used the reputation feature but maybe that's just an ego thing.

I share the general irritation with people who lack the manners to appreciate that other people here are not being paid for their help, and don't owe them such help.

I have spent many hours here searching the forum for answers. And guess what? 99 percent of the time, the question has already been asked and answered - or at the very least - a very good point in the right direction can be had. Having previous programming experience in other languages certainly helps, but it should not be an impediment to learning if someone doesn't. It just takes a bit more work and determination.

In my not so humble opinion, if you don't wake up at three in the morning a few times and say "OMG, that's it" then go to the computer and finish the code, you just aren't serious about programming, and probably shouldn't be here to begin with.