Dear Mods, why some Threads die here?

Ok, I don't know any better place to post this. This is not php quesiton but related to this forum. I post everyday so I want to learn if I am doing something wrong.

I looked in the manual for this forum but I cant find the answer. I found a lot of reason why and what NOT to post.
But I just need to know why
Why some Threads like this or this die?

I shouldn't repost I understand. If I know the reason they die, I make sure that doesn't happen.

Thanks

In some cases the answer has been given. If the OP is too lazy to understand or not competent enough to understand then those replying will often just give up helping.

Sometimes the OP can upset or anger those helping, eg consider this line


That's just rude! That's when helpers give up.

The answers have been given, it's now up to the OP to do some further research, on their own to further their own understanding - now that he/she has been given the right direction.

Those who help on this forum do so voluntarily, in their own time. There's a very old saying that goes something like this



People who come here looking for a free fish super will have their threads die out.

Those who learn to fish become useful members of the forum as the forum becomes a problem/solution resource rather than a Q&A site

This is very well explained, thank you.

The best answers you'll get from a volunteer forum are for questions that are fun to solve or tasks that are fun to perform. When you first posted a link to your website, you got a lot of really good help from me and Requinix because it was fun to break into your site and make minor changes. When you came back to show us some new login form you developed, I tried a couple of basic things and then told you my result: basic things no longer worked. Comprehensive security scans of a login form that may or may not actually go anywhere aren't fun. That's why the responses tapered off. This happens a lot on the forums. The question just stops being interesting. What Northie said about people not understanding the answer also applies. Sometimes a person is HANDED the answer and still continues to argue. That thread contains some classic examples of bad questions and bar forum etiquette. Now, this is the reason why some threads taper off and the conversations die. What about threads that never get started?

The new user guide covers some classic "bad questions." Your posts tend to fall on the "bad" side of the spectrum, though they're by no means the worst. Your post titles have spelling errors, 3+ punctuation marks in a row, and are generally ambiguous. Some of your most recent posts:
Most of these titles don't follow the Object-Deviation method of writing a thread title (specified in the "bad questions" link in my signature). There are further spelling errors and the ever-important !!!!!!!!! and ????????, which annoy people and prevent them from clicking. The remainder of these thread titles are vague. You have 4 threads generically titled "security," just in the last few weeks.

Your threads always seem to get clicks and at least one response, mostly because you post in PHP and that's the most active forum. Take a look at another forum on here. In the Beginner Programming forum there's bee a thread called Any Prolog Experts Here? for 11 days. No responses. It's still the first thread in the forums. I think the answer to her question is "no."

Also, since this is a generic question, I've moved it to the lounge and linked to it in threadspotting.

-Dan

It doesn't feel great to realise one has been wrong but hey, you are making good sense here. All points taken and respected. Apologies for any previous law breaking

Edit: By the way, how do you modify this topic:

Duplicating my website, is it better to use the sabe DB or create another DB?

Well said, Northie and Dan.


You include a link to the thread and ask a moderator of that forum to change it for you. In this case, perhaps Dan will take care of it for you in the morning.

I corrected the spelling on the post title. You can also "report" your own posts under the category of "other" and put your request in there.

I wasn't necessarily saying that you have been wrong, or broken any rules. I was just pointing out that your thread titles are ambiguous (which gets you fewer clicks) and your problems generally aren't fun to solve. Sometimes that's the way it goes. Click on my name and check out the threads I started when I first joined. NOBODY was able to help me. One of them never got a single response. My problems aren't fun.

-Dan

zxcvbnm,

First of all, it's not the responsibility of the Moderators to answer forum questions. Let's get that misconception cleared up now.

As Moderators, our responsibilities are to keep the forums clean of spam, ensure that posts are sent to the proper forums, mediate disagreements between users, act as a conduit of communication between users and the forum Administrators / Owners, and in an effort to ensure quality information is available on the forum, work with the user community to see that the basic forum rules / guidelines are adhered to as much as possible.

Answering questions is the choice of the DS user community. Sometimes users choose to answer a question, sometimes they choose to let it die. Since Moderators are a part of the DS community, just like our users, we can choose to answer or ignore. It's just that simple.

Luckily, Devshed has a bevy of insanely talented developers, who are experts in every conceivable language, who are all at different stages of their careers, and who care about the DS community. Because of the depth of technical knowledge and the "skin in the game" attitude of our Moderators, we tend more often than not to try and point users in the right direction. However, this is a choice on the part of the Moderators, not a responsibility or a requirement. We have plenty of Moderators who are content to sit back, let the forum communities work out problems on their own, and concern themselves only with their Moderator responsibilities. Each Moderator is a little different in that sense.

Also, keep in mind that the Moderators contributing time and talent to Devshed are here on a completely volunteer basis. We don't get paid, we don't get recognition; for what it's worth, we don't get thanked a whole lot, either. In the 9+ years I've been a Moderator on DS, where I've answered a boatload of questions, helped restructure several of the forums (anyone remember the old HTML/CSS/Javascript forum? LOL), helped launch several forums (XML, Software Design, Website Critiques, ColdFusion, Business Help, Scripts... probably a few more I'm forgetting), guess what I received? A ball cap. That was probably 5 or 6 years ago. And, it has a DS logo on it, so basically I'm a walking billboard for DS when I wear it. But, it's a cool hat. LOL

Anyhow... don't bang on the Moderators when threads don't get answered. Frankly, as much as we like to help, we all have families, or day jobs, or are in school full time. If you figure out the answer to your own question, post it as a response. Help out other users who are still learning skills that you already know. Contribute. That's why we're here; we can only assume that making a contribution is why you're here, too.