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“Code Only” and “Link Only” Replies!

  • Статья

If you found a question without any reply, and you do not have enough time to write a complete reply, did you try to post only URL(s) or few line of code without any description?

I think posting a piece of Code without any description is not good at all.

But, links are useful if using them in these situations:

  • Link to further reading
  • link to related resources that the reply comes from
  • link to related download URL(s)
  • link to guideline(s) for posting properly

By the way, it seems there is an exception: a very simple question from a newbie user! I think we can post a URL that shows her/him an address! The OP (Original poster) will find that she/he should learn more about it before post in a public forum. This seems somehow a polite way to say “RTFM, you are not in the right place!”. What do you think? Is it acceptable to reply without putting any information in it?

Thanks,

Saeid Hasani

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2016
    Hello Saied, good question!I personally suggest to have some basic (polite) reply, even to newbies.It's perfectly fine to redirect them to basic material...But if you post code, it should not take more than a few minutes to add some extra info to make it usable.No answer to a question is better than half an answer...
    • Anonymous
      September 21, 2016
      Good point! You meant:If we are tight on time, it is not good to post any reply! We can leave it now and back again to the forum when we have enough time for providing informative replies! Thanks Peter for sharing your idea! :-)
      • Anonymous
        September 25, 2016
        I want to point something regarding "leave it now and back again..."Coming back to the forum thread and add more response is great, but I want to comment that I am against update a message, which already got respond. In my opinion, once a message have a response, we should not edit it anymore. In fact I would love to see this feature built-in the forum as I do in my forums - a message can be edit for X time only, or only if it did not has responses.* My point is that we cannot change history, and if the message got responses and you change the content then the responses looks like irrelevant and out of content.
  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2016
    Great point. At least it helps to point out the part of the code that you're fixing or referring to, or what it does.Thanks!
    • Anonymous
      September 21, 2016
      Right Ed, It helps the OP and other users to learn how that code solves the issue. Moreover, it will help to search engines to find it out by the keywords used in the description (not comments in the code!), hence other people will find the it by using the search engines. I see your point Ed and you're absolutely right. Thanks for sharing :)
  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2016
    Yep I agree, I see lot of people copying and posting ONLY threads where a verbose answer can be given.
    • Anonymous
      September 21, 2016
      The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 25, 2016
    Great question for discussion Saeid :-)But I am not exactly agree with the idea that we cannot point the OP to the answer without starting to summarize the issue in the forum. Ifthere is a good tutorial of a post that five the exact answer, I am OK with simply say something like:----------------------------------------------Good day ????Please check if this link solve your issue----------------------------------------------In fact I prefer to point people to tutorials over the attempt to write the same tutorial for each question. Moreover, it help people to understand that their answer was online and next time they might learn to search before they ask. Searching for solutions and answers, and reading documentations are a very important parts of been a developer :-)