Welcome wrote: ⤴Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:49 amIf you try to help people on the forum, how do you select the ones you help? Is it based solely on the topic, or do you evaluate the poster's previous threads first?
My level of expertise is extremely low so I am generally reading and learning from the experts. If I believe I can contribute anything to a problem it is generally so basic that the OP has little or no history and, in any case, it would make no difference to me what their history was.
I see myself offering help in very simple situations so the experts can take the more complicated problems. For example, I often post to say "this question comes up often and you can find answers in these threads...". (e.g.: Why does double booting Windows and Linux mess with the clock setting? That gets asked regularly and I know the answer.)
I also post when I see a question is getting no traction and I believe it should not be difficult to answer by those with more expertise. In that case I will post to ask the OP to give us the information which might be useful in resolving the question. Even though I do not have the answer this serves to get the ball rolling and, sure enough, often others come in to help.
I try to answer any simple question I may know the answer to so the experts can dedicate their time to complex things.
If I start reading the OP and it is badly written, carelessly written, lazily explained and it looks like I am going to have to put effort that the OP was to lazy to do, then I just skip it.
Sometimes I can't make heads or tails of an OP and I think it is badly explained and then someone comes in who understands perfectly what the OP meant.
Posters who have been rude to me I have on ignore so I do not see their posts. I do this mainly because I tend to forget who they are and I get tired of having to put up with their rudeness.
OTOH, I tend to remember very well posters who have been helpful and nice and I go out of my way to be nice to them even if I cannot be of much help because generally they are the ones helping me.
I miss
Cosmo who was very helpful when I joined three or four years ago. Looking him up I see he has very few posts after May 2018 and none after September 2019, a year ago. I do not know the reasons why he stopped posting and I guess it is none of my business but I remember him as being very helpful. Probably people move on to other things in life.
Please do not use animated GIFs in avatars because many of us find them distracting and obnoxious. Thank you.