There's been a lot of interesting posts in the last few hours. Think a lot of them have been positive too - cracking.
I have never seen the name "dakta" in the users list.
dakta, I guess you should visit the chat room from time to time to get a true impression of what is happening there.
Unless you have a good memory you won't have seen my name. It's actually a totally different subject but I did spend some time there, in fact I remember having a chat with 3v0 9I think - could have been en0) about wind energy late one evening. We're going back a LONG time though -> I'll admit I stopped visiting as often because of an 'event' in which I was critisised for asking questions. Criticising is the nice terminology for it.
"You will get out of this what you put into it."
Totally agree with people who say this. I am not sure, and forgive me, what impact this has on what I'm saying (I do acknowledge there ARE people who just want the easy route - it happens on any 'skilled' forum), but yes, for what it's worth this is true.
In fact, (rambling story alert) my first experience with microcontrollers was at college - and this chance to get to grips with microcontrollers was cut short because, to put it simply none of the kids really had an interest in assembly, and the teacher didn't want the work of dragging disinterested people through the rigmarole of it, that said I enjoyed the little taste I did get, so much so when someone tasked me with a problem I now go out of my way to use microcontrollers just so I can play with em
By no means an expert, in fact my only experience so far is with PIC's, 8051 and the infineon 167 series in very limited capacity, but we're always expanding. There's much more I'd like to do, but i've not been given a task yet that can't be handled by a 99p 8-bit controller! Moral of the story - if you're interested, you stick with it and you get more out of it. So we're in agreement.
Anyway, back to what people have said:
I have become much less patient lately simply because I have come across so many new(er) members who just demand answers, and then refuse to listen to the explanations.
It's frustrating I know. I use another forum frequently and the amount of people who could help themselves and don't is disheartening, you lose the will to live almost, and can't face repeating yourself yet again.
One thing I will say to be careful of though, is sometimes when you try and show someone a solution to a problem, they don't immediately grasp it - if this happens then you're going to have a moment where you might think the person you're talking to is either very stubborn or plain thick. It's not always the case, in fact I can quite confidently say people with learning difficulties do get involved here, some of these are very enthusiastic and would love for the logic to suddenly jump out when trying to understand what people are asking them to do. Which it will, but might take some prompting.
If that sounds like a lot of hard work, there's no shame in just moving on and not replying to a thread, as long as we miss out the unpleasantness then everyones happy. I know I'm probably talking about an event that is very rare, but...yeah.
Perhaps we need to take a stronger stand. BUT there is no doubt in my mind that the moderators will be labeled as bullies or Nazis for doing so.
I don't think you do really, you look at this place and it's generally quite civilised, I didn't escalate my own issue to the moderators but perhaps I should have done at the time. It's over and done with now, but definitely put me off the forum for a while. (and yes, I'd read the datasheet lol).
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When I read this (i.e this thread) I thought to myself "I hope I have not been thought guilty of this"
Ironically, I support a lot of the arguments put forward by those I'm arguing against, the above sentence is pretty much the reason why. I know a lot of people want their homework doing for them, at the end of the day I just wouldn't want people making more genuine requests for assistance to be put off asking in case they 'deliver the wrong impression'.
That's pretty much my point of view in a nutshell.
If a member feels he doesn't consider the OP's question worthwhile he should either ignore the post or ask the OP for more details.
Pretty much agree.
I've taken over this thread a bit, so I'll let this 'devils advocate' arguement drop, just as long as we don't 'criminalise' the genuine article looking for assistance, that's all.