sarcastic rant

[BobHamburger]

<sarcastic rant>

Hi everybody I a newbie to LABview I have class asignment and I been skiping class the last for weeks now the assingment is do tommorow can anybodie hellp me? I hav'nt even tried or cracked a book or asked a tudor hear at school for hellp but I no that you guys will give me the answer to my simpleass class assignmeant. Tnx.

</sarcasm>

Sorry comrades, I just hit my saturation point reading posts along the lines of the above. I know that we're here to share knowledge and offer the benefits of our insights to those with less experience, but sometimes the obvious HH posts make me want to scream. I understand that occasionally the college work load can be oppressive, and sometimes life intrudes on our best plans, but when I see posts like this I have to ask myself if some of these students have lost sight of the fact that they're supposed to at least try to learn when they're in school... not just hand in the assignments.

Thank you for letting me vent. I feel much better now. :beer:

[Maca]

Its like you are frequenting the same forums as me

There has been a lot of homework questions lately though, I do agree.

Perhaps new members should have to pass a "test", Ie can't create new topics until they post 10 reply's, have their posts moderated etc..

What do other members think?

I do realise that some possible controls will create an extra load on the forum moderators/admins and as such may not be practical, but I will put my hand up to help out with some of the more shitty jobs the admins have to deal with, in order to lighten their load.

[BobHamburger]

QUOTE (Maca @ Dec 21 2008, 05:59 AM)

Perhaps new members should have to pass a "test", Ie can't create new topics until they post 10 reply's, have their posts moderated etc.

I don't think that I agree with these approaches, as they are a little too Draconian and would impose quite a load on the moderators. What I had in mind was to make some parts of the Forum Guidelines (i.e. Section 4, http://wiki.lavag.org/Forum_Guidelines#Homework_hustlers' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">Homework hustlers) more explicit and/or visible during the new account registration process. It's all too common when installing new software or setting up a site membership to have to scroll down through a Terms of Use agreement and click that you agree; the problem is that nobody actually reads these things. What we need is a simple way to convey the most important Guidelines in a manner which improves the chances that people actually understand and follow them.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

[Justin Goeres]

QUOTE (BobHamburger @ Dec 21 2008, 06:01 AM)

What I had in mind was to make some parts of the Forum Guidelines (i.e. Section 4, http://wiki.lavag.org/Forum_Guidelines#Homework_hustlers' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">Homework hustlers) more explicit and/or visible during the new account registration process. It's all too common when installing new software or setting up a site membership to have to scroll down through a Terms of Use agreement and click that you agree; the problem is that nobody actually reads these things.

There is nothing you could possibly do to the forum guidelines or user agreement that would actually cause it to be read (& followed) by the kinds of people who post HH questions. It's tilting at windmills.

I actually think we handle the HHs pretty well here. Personally, I ignore most of them, or if I have a few minutes I'll write a "show us what you've got so far" response. If I'm having a really bad day, I occasionally take a rhetorical swing at one of them to make myself feel better.

And here's the thing: we want people with homework problems in LabVIEW to be successful, so they'll have a great experience with LabVIEW. And we want LAVA to be the friendly, cool place where LabVIEW users congregate. If there are users here who occasionally want to do people's homework for them, then that honestly doesn't bother me too much. And now that I'm rereading the Forum Guidelines section you linked above, I think it's too strict. People should be able to come here with simple, newb-level LabVIEW questions for their job, so why not the same kind of questions for their school work? (provided they show some initiative, which is the way we currently handle most of it)

[Yair]

Bob, can you help me with this, please?

Personally, I just ignore these as well and I usually don't even go into these threads because LAVA works too slow and I don't feel like waiting until the page loads. The only exceptions are if the thread looks potentially interesting or if I see a lot of people replied and hopefully there'll be some fun in there. However, I try not to join the ganging up (although I do remember one case in which I did, and I got reprimanded for misconduct).

Personally, I feel that the NI forums are a much more suitable place for any beginner posts, as it has more mass and the poster is considerably more likely to get a quick reply, but I know that Mike feels otherwise. Either way, I don't really care that much as long as the volume is not so large that it drowns the good stuff.

[TobyD]

QUOTE (Maca @ Dec 21 2008, 02:59 AM)

There has been a lot of homework questions lately though...

The HH's always come out in full force near the end of the quarter/semester at school - days before their final projects are due.