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Originally Posted by ecbritz
I think the newbie-problem is common to ALL software user forums. There is ALWAYS a number of experts or veterans exchanging knowledge and opinions on a high level of expertise. And there are ALWAYS some newbies who enter the room with their clueless questions and opinions.
In my experience, a forum supporting a worthwhile program usually has one or two veterans who go back to the beginning of the forum and who gave their lives, or their retired lives -- certainly their patience and time -- to hapless newbies and fellow-experts alike, showing undaunted charity and dignity. I have endless admiration for these unsung heroes of the internet.
The answer to the problem is that when a question is asked, a short, factual, practical and polite answer should be given, and this answer should not be repeated by others.
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Well, if you want information for free, then you have to suffer through all the agonies of putting up with people wanting to add their $.02. Oh, the humanity of it all.
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But it is of course not human nature to do so. There will be grandstanding, taking sides, emotional language, even insults, sympathy for the poor newbie sod, or irritation with his delusions, spun-out yarns, and so forth. Software forums provide a platform for the antics of human nature, and there you have it.
I was carried along by the flood in this thread, now approaching 700 or 800 views. Apparently it made interesting reading, and I certainly learned a lot from it. 
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{shrug}. You, however, got what you came for, right? (and, FYI, 7-800 views is not a lot for this particular forum. Those aren't uniques, AFAIK.) Instead of wasting 40 or 60 or 100 hours of your own precious life learning how to do something yourself, you suffered through 2 hours of forum-reading, and walked away with the knowledge given to you by others. It's simplicity itself to exploit the desire of people to demonstrate that they know
how to do something and use it to your own advantage.
That is "human nature" as well.
Hitch