Nevermind, I Figured It Out
This weekend, I was doing a bunch of digging into how to use some of the open source ORM (Object Relational Mapping) packages out there. That process of technical research follows a pretty predictable pattern:
- do a few Google searches
- open the best results into a bunch of tabs
- read the info
- come up with a few, more detailed questions
- repeat
As that loop progresses, the questions I end up asking Google get more and more specific. By the time I've been digging for an hour or 2, the bulk of the results are starting to come from forums, mailing lists and other discussions of the technology in question.
That's when one of my pet peeves rears its head. You put a fairly detailed question into Google, get a page from a forum where someone asked your EXACT question (including most of the nuance for your specific needs) and, after a few people saying they don't know how or aren't sure, the original questioner pops back in and says, "Nevermind, I figured it out".
And that's it. Nothing else.
Particularly gnarly questions yield more than one such incident. Even worse, there are often 5 or 6 people just as frustrated, asking this person exactly HOW they figured it out.
To me, this is an online etiquette and/or karma thing. If you go asking other people to explain how to do something, and you figure it out on your own, telling them "Nevermind" is just the first step. It is now your responsibility to explain back to the forum/mailing list/etc. what you did to figure it out.
Sure, your solution might not work for everyone who will stumble across the discussion, but it's a whole lot better than being mocked by someone saying they *have* the answer, but haven't shared it.
