My opinion on why its great to help people (with anything)

I've always been a little brat when it comes to getting help with coding and stuff, at least online. I'd find some random website/forum and ask a question. Sometimes I would never visit again, sometimes months later if ever. I really disliked StackOverflow for their policy of only asking "Good questions" which my nitpicky mind considered crap because that's like saying some questions are bad, and everyone knows there's no such thing as a bad/dumb question! Well I realize they have a good platform and policy to talk from, and that Unity implemented a similar system here on Unity3d.com I think its awesome.

My last question didn't make it through the moderator screening, and I had to find out why. I did (another nullRefException) and as it turns out I found the answer to my question just a few minutes after posting the question.

Anyway, I decided to spend some time answering others questions and was pleasantly surprised! It helped me expand my knowledge and reaffirmed what I already knew. The simple hunt for things to help someone also helped me increase my own knowledge on lots of things!

So basically there's a few reasons why you ought to help others, other than it can be good for others:

1. It helps affirm your understanding of the subject at hand (I believe someone once said if you can't explain it to someone else you don't understand it enough yourself, I think that was Einstein =D).
2. It helps expand your own knowledge (and skills).

So, my friends, if you ever wanted to be one of those people who knows a little about a lot then I suggest you go out and try to help someone! Its also much less frustrating to help someone with code than to wrack your brains alone trying to solve your own game dev problems!

 

The issue is rarely with the question itself and more so the general lack of details to form a good response to the question. I can't count the number of times I've had to ask for more details because the inquirer failed to provide any whatsoever.

There are some situations though where the answer is simply glaringly obvious. Such as those who ask for tutorials yet apparently never saw the "Learn" link despite having had to click "Community" in order to access these forums.

Yes, they may have performed a search in order to locate these forums. If that's the case why could they not have simply asked the search engine to find them tutorials too?

 

I'm a bit on the edge on helping people with everything.
It's spoonfeeding. There's this old saying of give a man a fish, or teach him fishing.
people who always ask, even for the most simple problems, will always keep asking and slow down others.

And when i read:

You, in my opinion, cleary were just lazy the moment you asked the question.
You didn't seem to even bother to start thinking about your issue yourself, but rather have others solve it for you.
When there was no solution directly handed to you and you had no other choice but to think a little about it, you found it, just a few minutes later.

Before bothering other people with maybe even repetitive questions on the net.
-step 1: Put effort into solving a problem for yourself, learn from it, try to find a way, train your brain.
-step 2: If you really can't seem to come up with a solution, use online search engines to search for other people who have had the same problem, there's probably already a solution online.
-step 3: If all else failed, you just can't find a solution for an extended period of time, and there's no working solution to find online after searching for quite a while. Then start asking.

It may seem a bit harsh, but people who can't find solutions on their own or help themselves will not bring advancement, but rather slow down in whatever they're doing.

If you can't get on with something right from the start, use available resources to learn.
If you can't get on with something after learning and still often rely on requested help, it's maybe not the right thing for you.
If you even on other things often need help, you should maybe start putting more effort into what you're doing.

Because otherwise you just get other people to do your work, while you lean back.

 

I agree Ryiah. I have an argument when people ask questions online. Sometimes I want to know something about a feature in a game, and someone in that online game will direct me to google. I tell them it would take them 30 seconds or less to just tell me instead of waste my own time googling things if they already know it.

Oppositely sometime its easier and quicker just to find the answer yourself. It really depends.

In response to Fuzzy; I didn't mention that I had actually performed some research in to the subject like I do with most questions that I have. I was just a bit lazy, and part of the solution was found after doing some harder thought on search terms and what was wrong. Sometimes it helps to ask a question, or get to asking it and then find out you know how to find the answer or otherwise figure it out yourself and never finish posting it.

 

Come moderate on answers for a while. There are plenty of bad questions. UA has a similar policy of only allowing good questions, which is probably why your question got rejected. And as everyone knows, anything that everyone knows is normally wrong.

The community is built by veterans, for the exchange of ideas and support of other veterans. We tolerate newbies because you have to pass through a newbie phase before you can become a veteran. But the faster you can pass through the newb stage the better. Only about one in ten newbs actually do it. (WAG estimate, don't quote me)

By understanding the value of helping other as a learning tool you've taken the first steps to not being a newb. Congratulations.

 

You know, when I post in the design forum or discussion forum, I get lots of responses. I answer questions when people ask if I know I can help.

When I post a question about a problem I am having in Unity, I get nothing, not one answer. Lots of views but no one wants to "spoonfeed" me.

Odd, because I would gladly share my skills and I do every day. I rarely ask for help and I always look for answers first before asking. I am very good at figuring things out but sometimes, especially when there is a lack of documentation, which seems to be the case right now, I find it very frustrating that I can't get one person to answer my question or at least sympathize with me.

Not all of us need hand holding. Not all of us plan to "slow you down". Some of us just want a little help so we can go and feed ourselves. Many of us will return the favor in the future. Oh, and not all of us are kids, trust me. I have kids, adult kids.

Btw, this does not all all refer to the asset developers. They always help me and are fantastic, even when my question turns out to be due to something stupid I did.

And...if you want to post here just to tell the rest of us to go away, we are slowing you down, they why even take the time to post?

 

I liked what you have to say Teila but I did not appreciate what Fuzzy said! Its when people post things which are disrespectful to others or cause pointless drama that turns me away from these online message boards.

 

My help is telling people off, banning them, locking threads and being a giant ass to the entire forum.

Actually I'm partly joking, I just want to help out.

 

@Teila
You clearly reached my step 3, tried to solve it, tried to search for solutions and then asked. And I think that's totally fine in such cases new questions with answers on the web will help future people with the same problem and from that point on speed things up. Too bad though that in such a case no one could/wanted to help you though.

I'm not too deep into design related problems and kind of questions are asked there.
But when those are kinda basic things, where you know there are lots, or at least some rather easy to find tutorials, or how-to's around I would start to think, and that strongly depends on the complexity of the asked question, if it's a basic question, that it was asked by a rather lazy person who might drop what he's doing after not too much time, because it takes too much effort to do on his own. And then everyone's time was wasted. I know I know, this is not always the case. But I think someone who really wants to reach things puts his own effort into it, and if this is using google as for a lot of paid tech supports apparently.

It's kinda like you want to to body building for the brain, but always have to ask someone else to help you lift the barbells, it's not you who gets the real training.

@Braineeee

I did, by no means, want to appear disrespectful or cause drama, just wanted to give my honest opinion about this, even if people might not like my opinion on this, but threads about stuff are to give opinions about stuff, pro and contra.

To give an analogy to the seeking-for-help issue is that there's someone who bought an uhm.. furniture warehouse (to not make advertisement) table, and has a handbook on how to build it. But instead of going by the book he rather asks other people to build it for him. [building a game / game dev books, tutorials, guides etc.]
This way it will always happen when he buys new furniture because going by the manual is too much effort.

What i have in mind for this is:
The are thousands of books written on all sorts of topics, I'd say like 95% of common programming problems for current game dev have been solved and the solutions are there to find on the web.
If people still need a helping hand there are schools for such things to go to, to learn, to have someone to ask, a person that it's job is to get asked and help you with certain things.

Other people usually have other business to go after.
And it is certainly good and nice to help people with issues.
But only if it's something someting rather specialized that's not yet been written down like 10 to 100 times+ and to find with a 5minute search on google.
But even then it's usually the programmers job to find a working solution, that is what he's getting paid for, that is his job - to find solutions to problems we create ourselves.


Dang, I'ts 3:50 AM again, i hope I wrote this stuff correctly, if anyone finds spelling or grammar mistakes, feel free to keep them.
This message is by no means supposed to be aggressive or anything.
I'm just trying my best to make my standpoint clear. (As a non native english speaker )

 

I used to help a lot more in the past than I do these days. I was happy to do so, and felt it was it was only fair as I learned a fair bit from answers and the forums. Though I never actually asked questions, I did find existing solutions from questions that had been posed before.

With rare exception, I simply don't bother much anymore. Partially because I don't have a lot of free time, but mostly because a majority of people seeking help around here are inconsiderate asshats. I don't know if has changed over time, or I just didn't notice that much before. Rarely does the one see the phrases please or thank you. One of last times I helped someone, they treated it as if was some sort of paid support they were entitled to. Not only was there never a thank you, but just more and more requests to adjust or modify their original help because it didn't work with other stuff they wanted to add. Simple question often is often just bait, which instantly turns into "can you walk me through it on skype?", "I don't get it, could you send me the code?", "Could you just make a video tutorial?".

Sadly, experience has taught me that helping people I don't already know here is a waste of time for everyone involved (they don't actually want "help", they want to convince people someone to write their game, and I am not actually helping, just the latest sucker to listen to their begging).

In part, it is this kind of attitude that has jaded me.

 

Well I've been helping on various programming boards over the decades and people used to be grateful to accept code now they'll argue and want you to make the whole game for them so I rarely bother like Zombie.

Some reasons I ignore helping:

1. didn't have verbose topic title
2. didn't bother helping me to help him ie no effort to question
3. no formatted code tags when posting code
4. it's already in the docs and on google in a clear manner
5. has an irritating air about him
6. previously been whining or stirring on forum

 

With all due respect... , this quote above is disrespectful to everyone who posts asking questions here. It is fine to ignore questions, that is your prerogative, but to tell us our asking slows you down....well that is hard to believe when you post such long responses to something you don't even like to do.

You have no idea how long the people asking have looked. I don't always say that in my posts.

I am sorry that you have had a bad experience, Zombiegorilla. I usually make a point of saying "Thank you" in my thread asking for help, even before I get a response, but it doesn't often do any good. I am sure there are times I forget because it is 1 am or my phone rings...etc.

Remember, some people are rude and have expectations and they always will. You should help if you can feel so inclined, but realize not all of us are "asshats" and not all of us are ungrateful. Many of the folks asking might be kids and kids who are not taught to say "thank you" often do not. One thing I do when my kids forget to thank me....I say to them, You are welcome. Nine times of of 10, they respond with Thank you. After a while, they remember.

It is important to let people know that you have helped that you like to feel appreciated.

 

Oh, is this why you don't respond to my "help" threads?

 

No I just never see them. I can't be everywhere at once
That list is list of people I reject, not those I don't find.

Also I only ever use "new posts" as that's most useful for moderators. I don't go into subsections so if you post when I'm asleep, being on the other side of the world, I probably don't see you.

 

Or those of us who tried couldn't find the solution either. I know when I see a question that flies over my head or I couldn't find a solution for I rarely post stating as such.

 

There's a difference between giving my opinion on a topic that caught my interest, and spending time to get other peoples problems solved, who are, technically seen, competitors.

 

True and that is usually what I assume. Although...based on the above comments, it seems that is not the only reason we are ignored.

 

Trust me, I am not a competitor. lol Besides, life is far to short to see everyone as a future enemy. Someday, you may need someone to help you...maybe not.

 

They may be your competitor today, but nothing is stopping them from being your boss/employee tomorrow.

 

^ power hungry CEO in the making.

 

If the poster has murdered grammar and left it in a ditch, I skip answering.

 

Well, stereotypically that seems to be exactly what they're going for, the boss position: let the lower ones do the work to realize your visions.

But then i'll be getting paid for it!

 

Not only that, but the best way to deal with a competitor, especially a young one that is just starting, is to hire them! That is my plan! I am grooming my son to run our company so he can pay me. He is not only a talented programmer but shows signs of being a great designer.

 

Grow your own company!

 

Oh, I was just teasing you! lol

No worries. I don't expect you to be everywhere. Actually, I was referred to several of your posts by one of my developer friends and they helped a great deal. I wish the search function for the forums worked a bit better.

 

Yup, I have two artists that I am grooming as well.

 

When it comes to answering questions, one of the things that gets me to answer is if the question intrigues me. Taking the time to help figure out and lay out the answer helps me hone my skills as well. While I enjoy the helping part, this added advantage makes trying to answer at least some questions more justified in terms of spending my limited time.

This doesn't mean the question needs to be some kind of complicated challenge. In fact, I generally look for simple, straight forward questions to answer; question which are direct and to the point are best. While I don't mind laying out some pseudocode for how to solve a reasonably sized problem, I do not want to end up trying to answer something as broad as, "How do I create an AI system like in [cool new game]." Nor do I want to end up in a situation where the person wants to be spoon fed every single step, which happened more than I liked back when I was very active on a different site.

I do try to keep in mind that some programming or game development questions are really more, "Point me in the direction for figuring out X," type questions. Sometimes one just does not have the necessary basic information to know where to start searching for answers. If you don't know the correct terms, Google won't help you. I've run into this myself more than once over my time with programming both in Unity and in other areas. If I can point someone in the direction they need to go to learn what they need, all the better.

 

I love helping out, but there's reasons I don't.

People ask for help, but think they know better. So why bother asking the question in the first place if you "know better"? You either know or you don't..

I'd expect someone to at least even try, keep at it for lets say a day if it's still a no go then sure ask. No matter how dumb the question is.

I have taken a lot of my own time to provide example scripts, get to the end and they say "well, actually I now want this to happen" so I just wasted a lot of my own time and it starts to feel like I'm making it for them. I'm not here to make the game for you.

I still do help people out, I'm just selective as to who I help out.

 

While i love to help people, when I started with unity 4.3 i found everything i need searching google. I have only started looking at forum and answers directly since unity 5 and the amount of people who dont even do a search first is staggering

 

You guys lump all of us together, sadly. I can completely understand helping someone and then finding out they are greedy, or ungrateful, or annoying, but by decided everyone is like that before you even try? It is not hard to ignore people on a forum, either through the mechanics or simply by not reading/responding to the post. Unfortunately, there appear to be more people who are annoyed by a few and extrapolate that to every poster on the forum.

Some questions are dumb...I agree. I ignore those. I read them, and pass them up. But not all of them are stupid. Some are real questions from people who have tried everything else.

Tell me..how does someone like me convince a reader of my post that I have done everything I could do to figure it out on my own and now need help from someone with more experience? Should I even try and if not, then where is this great Unity community that is one of our biggest selling points?

MagicZelda, I am having questions about Unity 5. I have tried googling, searching Unity's Search engine, searching the forums (bad search), asking my own contacts both on Skype and in my own house. Sometimes though, no one knows the answer around me. Could be that no one knows here as well. But that goes to show you that although we may not say it, we have tried every other avenue.

Not everyone ignores google before asking a question. Some folks still have questions after googling.

How do you tell them apart?

I feel as though people are justifying why they don't help others.

 

As bad as part of the original post sounds about finding the answer minutes after posting a question, I can relate. I'll search around for an answer in all the wrong places/ways, be convinced I have discovered a real stumper of a question, then post on the forums or stackexchange only to have a light bulb go off in my head minutes later with the proper way to find the answer, before anyone can even respond.

I'm not sure what this phenomenon is called but it happens disturbingly often enough to the point where I ask less questions now and will remain stuck longer than I should to force myself to analyze the problem more, if only for the sake of protecting my ego.

 

Happens to me all the time as well. lol

 

Not helping others is the path of least resistance. It requires no justification of its own.

Helping people on the other hand requires work. This requires significant justification. The OP has pointed out one of the key justifications for helping, it strengthens your own knowledge of the subject.

Trouble is it doesn't take long to know everything there is to know about GetComponent, syntax errors and null references. That's why your generally see mid level coders helping, instead of experts.

 

It's probably some alternate form of Murphy's Law.

 

I've only recently felt knowledgable enough to even consider helping others by answering their questions. And there's still a good many I pass up because they go over my head.

I do tend to look for those 0 response posts in Getting Started or Scripting, since I, too, have been 'ignored' with my requests before.

I do agree that it can be frustrating to see posts for the same thing over and over, or when you can tell someone asked without putting much effort into the problem. I've become a bit pickier over which requests I'll spend my time helping with as a result of this. But like others have said, if they take the time to format their question with proper grammar, code tags, a good description of the problem, and evidence they've put some thought into it already, I'll gladly assist.

Additionally, I'll do my best to teach them the thinking behind the answer, so they actually learn something about programming or Unity functionality... not just how to do this one specific thing.

But sometimes, I just need something to do while I'm pooping, so I'll help anyone.

Edit: Great example of a worthwhile assist.

 

There's some great responses from many people here! I don't think there's anything more that I could add except to comment on a few responses.

There's a mantra in the programming field; and its about helping others. "The most valuable engineer/programmer you have is one who helps others". Meaning you can be the best programmer on the team but if you aren't helping your coworkers (or anyone, really), you're not being useful to the company.

Its quite selfish to withhold knowledge, money, help, etc. to those clearly in need.

I don't want to live in a world where people don't help their neighbors in need.

You don't know that person is going to be a future competitor or not.

We all know how vast the gaming market is. Most gamers can afford a new game, heck they bought the increasingly expensive hardware to play it on! A $15-$35 game is dollars and cents compared to that. Unless you're a massive company employing hundreds of programmers and artists creating a multimillion dollar AAA project, I doubt you need to care about competition.

To give an example of a good and charitable worker, I'll use my own experiences. I'm an High School graduate / College student adult who works in a dining hall. Yep, I'm a food service worker. On any given day I spend my time jumping from task to task, to help my coworkers. Not all of us want to spend the entire day there (though we get paid by the hour), and not all of us care to milk the clock. Its not ethically sound to do that. My boss tells me one of the top five employees in the place; because I bother to help out.

 

It's a vastly different ballgame when you are actually in adjacent meat spaces. If anything you might get fewer straight answers, but the advice you get is meant to guide you toward being a better programmer.

Sadly, sometimes the advice that needs to be given on the forums is to go back to high school and actually pay attention to algebra 2. Is it mean to say that? Kind of. Is it necessary advice to make them a better programmer/developer? Yes.

 

One of the beautiful aspects of this industry is that knowledge share and learning/training is practically a built in concept. Given the rate of change and growth, there is constantly new skills/knowledge to be acquired. Virtually everyone on my team spends about 15-20% of our time training. For new tech, typically one person will take lead on new tech, absorb it and disseminate it. That is what makes it fun and endlessly interesting. Over the next month I am given several lessons in uGUI, and I give weekly classes on general Unity usage for artists. On the flip-side, starting next week a couple of us are getting crash-courses on Python (heh... they are calling it advanced Python for beginners.) Gaming is the best place to be if you like learning.

 

Very true, there's been a bit of a flip change in areas and I'm learning with the artists about holographic materials and hard surface modelling with mask based colour and reflection (pretty much don't actually use texture samples at all, just Vector colours mixed with masks). It's interesting stuff, I'm an old style slap a texture on something UV mapped kinda person..

Terrain based vs. Shiny based is a different way of thinking. I'm sure I'll "get it" at some point..

 

I used to always help everyone, but when it becomes the same question over and over, it gets infuriating, can't stand people who can't do a google search for how to make a player move forward.

It not only wastes my time to read how to make a player walk forward, it wastes space on Unity web hosting for something that never needed to be put on here in the first place, because again, a google search can find almost any answer you want.

That's why I just really don't help much unless it's a genuine question I've never seen asked a billion times.

Thoughs who know me I'll spam the heck outta the learn section if I see stupid questions, I don't say a word other than the link.

Because we've all been noobs at something before, thats why I used to help all the time, I'd even stop doing everything I was doing to help, but it gets old seeing the same questions asked all the time.

 

Really? So no one asks legitimate questions here about scripting and programming? I know that is not true. Plenty of people ask good questions and because people like you and N1warhead no longer answer questions, others have to step in and help.

From what I see here, it is the ones that we all like and respect that are most likely to jump in and answer coding issues, the "old timers" and the coding experts. They seem to be happy sharing their knowledge. Maybe there is a reason for that.

 

I was in the scripting section yesterday responding to someone who needed that advice. If you don't know how the Pythagorean theorem works and you are doing a bunch of vector math, you might as well just shoot yourself. God forbid you start needing trig. The problem is that a good chunk of people who post in the scripting section want solutions, not advice. They are script kiddies who don't know how to program, and want others to do it for them. If you don't think this is the case, then I should guide you through the scripting section on a weekend when only twelve year old's seem to post.

Posts from people who actually want to be elucidated on a subject are rare. Worse yet is they aren't easy to reply to when it's a broad topic, especially if it's a subject that would take the entirety of a lecture or two. Maybe you can get a useful link out of people, but for some reason that tends to not happen much.

 

Have to agree with Rocko here, there are a far too large amount of people expecting solutions to their problems rather than the knowledge they need. For most people answering questions, I'd imagine this is just not an acceptable use of their time.

It's not lumping everyone under the same group, but when 75% of the questions you answer expect solutions over the resources to solve their question, people are going to stop answering questions. And you really can't blame them, even if your particular question is legitimate and your intentions just, there's just no way of knowing unless you've tried to explain as much in the question and people believe you.

I think this behaviour is quite common amongst programming Q&A everywhere these days. Programmers are the type of people that like to answer questions by giving people the resources to figure it out themselves. The reason for this, I believe (being a programmer myself), is that that is what they would want, if they were to ask a question.

The fact of the matter is, if you're asking a question, you need to learn something. In that situation letting you know what you need to learn is the kindest thing someone could do for you. Fixing your specific problem doesn't allow you to fix further issues that relate to the subject matter.

That is my view anyway.

 

Most of the schools I attended had instructors who were barely able to understand their own subjects well enough to teach them. Explaining the concept in a different manner can sometimes make a vast difference when learning a subject.

 

I don't know exactly what you meant with this line and apologies because I'm going to sound a bit rude here, but you know what I read here?

"I don't wanna waste my time, YOU waste your time"

or

"I can't be bothered with this, someone else do it for me"

If you think researching something to learn for yourself and that lack of effort shows in your question, I immediately lose any motivation to reply to such a post.

If I stumble upon someone who has clearly put effort and he has a half working solution and is struggling with something, then if I can help, I happily do it.

And frankly, if it's that simple that someone can answer you in 30 seconds (how do you know it would take 30 seconds too? that means you have an understanding of the answer), it's very probable that someone has already asked it and the answer is somewhere on the forums, but you didn't bother to search.

TL;DR : Your first step in answering "How do I X?" should not be "Ask on a forum".

 

hope it's ok to post this, it's been around the web for a while

 

Actually I learned just about everything I know related to unity by figuring out how to solve other people's problems.

I was clearly unable to hit my own goals at the time, so I would look at the forum and find a question that I was just as perplexed as them on, then figure out the solution and post it... this eventually really improves your problem solving skills and helps you learn new things really fast. Of course it might have taken hours when it shouldn't have but now that stuff is trivial. Looking back, it certainly wasn't a waste of time.

 

You know, nothing burns knowledge into memory like finding the answer for yourself.

 

You know, I totally get why it is difficult to help people with programming/script. It is perfectly acceptable to just direct them to the scripting forum, where such questions should be asked, or to tell them to use the Unity Search engine for such things. Or maybe show them the Teaching Forum where they can find tutorials. Or even ignore the question. When someone asks a general question about scripting or a "how can I make an rpg", I get it.

But it is not 75% of the questions here. You guys are perceiving this because these are the ones that we remember. We tend to remember negatives more than positives, unfortunately.

Most of the questions are not specific to coding but are questions like...I can't find any documentation on XYZ, can anyone point me in the right direction? Most of the time those folks don't know what to google or have sincerely tried and are only asking for a little advice on what to do next.

Other questions I see are...Anyone used this asset? Will it do this? Or I really like the picture you posted, what settings are best to make the light look like that?

Many of you have been seen answering those questions. When the OP said he helped people on the forums and enjoyed it, my guess is it was not just one type of question and probably not the obvious kid who has no clue what he is doing begging you to create his school project.

So stop blaming your lack of motivation to help others on the questioners. None of you have to answer any questions at all, but wouldn't it be better not to tell everyone why you don't? I would honestly prefer to hear from people like Lane, who actually tells me WHY he helps. It doesn't make Lane any better than you, just that he derives pleasure from helping others on the forums and you find it tedious and a waste of time. Either is valid.

 

I love to help people with scripting because as many have said, it reinforces your knowledge of scripting and also, while browsing the forums you might come across a good question which you'd also like to know the answer to.

Some reasons I don't help people:
1) don't feel like it
2) answer can be easily googled
3) someone has already given what I consider to be a good answer
4) I don't know the answer
5) the question is not clear enough
6) no code tags
7) the question is too broad
8) the code could be easily fixed even by a beginner if they just tried debugging it (also see #2)