Is it just me...

...or has anyone else noticed a lot of "lazy" posts lately where questions that have already been answered are being asked in new threads, seemingly without the OP even bothering to search the forum?

Worse, there seem to be a lot of questions about core concepts that are covered in numerous tutorials & that anybody attempting mobile app development should be aware of. How many posts about runtime permissions & AdMob do there need to be?!?!

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy to help anyone (where I can) who is having issues with B4X development (hell, I was a newbie once myself & probably asked hundreds of inane & obvious questions), but it seems that lately there is a general lack of basic understanding, forum searching & even laziness in a number of questions being asked - even to the point of some posters asking for someone to write the code for them!

I certainly don't want to discourage B4X users from asking questions, but people have to be prepared to make some effort themselves toward solving issues before they post.

Maybe I'm just being particularly grumpy, but it seems to me that this is becoming more & more common.

- Colin.

There is of course a lot of sense to what you write.

It takes time for new members to understand that 95% of their questions will be answered with a few searches. Building a usable search feature is a very challenging task. The result is that most non-Google search engines are very bad and most members never try to search. Personally I almost never use the search field on other sites.

We need to point new members, in a polite way, to the search feature.

Erel said:

There is of course a lot of sense to what you write.

It takes time for new members to understand that 95% of their questions will be answered with a few searches. Building a usable search feature is a very challenging task. The result is that most non-Google search engines are very bad and most members never try to search. Personally I almost never use the search field on other sites.

We need to point new members, in a polite way, to the search feature.

Click to expand...

I actually find the B4X forums search function to be very good. It's always my first go-to when I have an issue - so whatever you (or the forum dev) did, it works well.

Re your second point: I'm finding myself suggesting more & more that OP's try searching...

- Colin.

The answer to your question/statement is very simple: we live in the age of laziness! Above all, nobody has more desire to read, especially manuals and tutorials.

LucaMs said:

we live in the age of laziness!

Click to expand...

I'm very lazy too

I'm pretty new here, and I see too a lot of "basic questions". There's a lot of features I've not yet used, but I try to answer some basic questions, because I think the "experts" people should answer real difficult question, and we, the new one guys... answer the new basic question to relieve the experts, and get their help when it's really needed.
I think the B4X forum search is very good, sometimes it's hard to me to find the "right words" to search, but I think it's quite good. And yes, sometimes I see questions I don't know and just searching the forum I can "answer"... but I feel too new and probably will have the same errors, so I don't dare to say: "hey man, just search the forum"...
But I understand you, must be tired to see same questions again and again... and I apologize because I'm partly to blame for the situation...

Let me put myself here.

I re-started developing in B4A, after almost 3 years. Most features and logic and thinking I used then have changed to a point that I have to start from scratch. I still have the Lenovo phone with Lollipop, I bought then, to have the latest Android features.

I do not get regular time for B4A but do the development in bits and pieces now.

Many of the answers I found in the Forum search, to my searches, are right but irrelevant in today's requirement. So I have to continue searching or do hit and trial process to solve my problem. I too am aware that I will be redirected to search, if I ask a query which may seem obvious to experts or seasoned developers here.

So, I think to help beginners, lazyers, code-pleasers and yours-truly, we can just paste the search url which we did and found some relevant results. Note that it is the selection of correct words which gives the desired results and new comers fail here.

Regards,

Anand

AnandGupta said:

So, I think to help beginners, lazyers, code-pleasers and yours-truly, we can just paste the search url which we did and found some relevant results. Note that it is the selection of correct words which gives the desired results and new comers fail here.

Regards,

Anand

Click to expand...

Quite often I will see a question on the forum & am pretty sure I know the answer, but will want to check something first - so will do a quick search on the forum to confirm. In these cases, I will post the search result URL - however sometimes I absolutely know the answer & know that there are one or more threads on the forum that will provide help to the OP. Often in these cases, the OP's thread title is exactly what will yield a solution if they type it into the forum search - so I suggest to them that they try searching.

As I said in my original post, I'm happy to help where I can - but I also like to see others have "skin in the game" by trying to help themselves before they post.

- Colin.

Maybe Erel can add this option to the forum seach

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+start+with+b4x

Computersmith64 said:

I actually find the B4X forums search function to be very good

Click to expand...

I agree. It is a custom search engine based on Lucene that I've built. What I meant to say is that it takes time for new members to realize that the search engine is actually working and that they should use it.

AnandGupta said:

Many of the answers I found in the Forum search, to my searches, are right but irrelevant in today's requirement

Click to expand...

Note that the posts date is an important factor in the search engine scoring algorithm.

I don't really mind developers asking basic questions. It usually doesn't take more than a minute or two to answer. Pointing to an existing tutorial or guide is a good answer.

If a lazy poster bothers you, the best way to handle it is to simply ignore their thread.
He is free to be lazy, and you are free to ignore. Possibly somebody may be bored and like to help him. Possibly not.
I'm sure unanswered threads can be deleted after a certain amount of time.
But rest assured the more specific question posts creates more specific answer posts.
This improves the chances, speed, and ease of users finding an answer to an issue.
This only makes b4a better, the online community better, and the projects the user is working on better.
Even lazy posters improve the value of a forum and a product.