Do you you still consider important to contribute to SoloLearn Forum?!

Question

When you're having problems with a code or don't understand the output, obviously it is better to ask here. But, wait! You have your friend Google at your finger tips with the answer for most of your questions and you just intend not to know him and post here anyway without searching. But, wait! (again) Many times, you even spend more time using the search bar of the app to start reading former entries until you find one that satisfies you and if not, waiting until someone replies to your question. And, again! If your question is unanswered or was badly answered, you end up finally searching on Internet.
So, these lines make me think about the question above and if there is a way to improve SoloLearn Forum. What are your insights?!

Answer 1

(1/2) It is always important and relevant to contribute to forums you actively roam, *in terms of actually contributing*. If someone thinks that "contributing" to the forum is equivalent to posting anything, a poorly elaborated question, perhaps, without any effort at researching the problem at hand through the use of all-time accessible search engines, then I believe the concept of "contributing" here is skewed.
While good answers certainly raise the bar of a forum, often times only quality questions can invite quality answers. The scenario you described in your thread accurately depicts a learner who, for some reason, thinks it's a better idea to post a thread, perhaps one poorly composed due to no prior research into the topic of query, and then only proceed with said research after the thread receive no quality response. Not only is this not an effective way of searching for solutions, it also hurts the core of a Q&A forum.

Answer 2

(2/2) As such, I think more effort should be placed at teaching learners how to ask quality questions. There are techniques which will increase the chances of someone responding to your thread. A few community members have taken initiative to put together some guides, which, I think, needs to get more attention.
https://www.sololearn.com/Discuss/333866/?ref=app
https://www.sololearn.com/Discuss/657480/?ref=app

Answer 3

Honnestly I don’t really know. When people post questions, sometime they are really not precise, so people answer the wrong answer. But still we are still trying to answer the best we can. But just tell you that we are all here to learn. We are trying to help everyone. I like to contribute to SoloLearn.
Why?:
1st: Because I want to show how I appreciated this community.
2nd: Sometime when someone ask “why this output is like this” or “how to make this work”, it can train your mind to think and solve.
3rd: I want to build up this community, helping each other. It’s better learn together than alone!

Answer 4

My opinion:
1.) Whenever you have a question, first ask Google;
2.) if that doesn't help, use the search bar here;
3.) if that doesn't help, spend some time to write a quality question.
It is not efficient for an app like this to be crammed with trivial questions and their answers that you can get just anywhere.
If you want Sololearn to contribute something to the web, ask questions that the web hasn't answered yet.

Answer 5

Gordon Both of them. You can ask & answer in SoloLearn Forum. Two ways of contributing!!!

Answer 6

</Dan Rhamba> That is understandable, but while the answer tastes sweet, makes someone feel relevant and cared for, the question posted by the asker himself may have made other contributors cringe and shake their heads due to his insistence of not doing prior research. The thing about feelings is a two-way street. Often times, people are here to answer to questions worth answering and not to make other people feel good about themselves or feed into this illusion. In terms of learning, we also have to encourage people to learn how to find answers independently. Instead of the temporary pleasure of posting in a forum and receiving an answer, there is a long term benefit in doing so.

Answer 7

Just a thought ... in the past, when I join a forum and posted something (question), the draft didn't go immediately into the listing of Q&A, rather, it goes to a temporary list, which awaits approval.
When it gets approved eventually, it goes to Q&A, otherwise when I open my post again I might see a note saying how/what should I do to fix the post, to make it more relevant or suitable. Or, if the admins found my post was far beyond any remedies (like really bad), I get the note saying my post was "unworthy" (might use other words to describe) and that my post draft will be removed from the temporary list within a certain period.
I don't know, for me, it was fine going through such mechanism, it trained me to be more thoughtful with what I wrote, appreciate other people's time, and (a bit) vocabulary improvements.
Well that's just me, given today's trend of *everything* in an instant, probably such mechanism wouldn't fit today's style anyways :D

Answer 8

Hatsy Rei I really misapprehended that bit...of course the questions should be relevant enough with no or not well explained solutions available.

Answer 9

Now that I've spent some time here, I'm actually more and more realizing that the current form of the Q&A section is not as interesting to me as rest of the app.
1) To build a community, a broader range of topics should be allowed. people like to discuss philosophical questions, share career experiences, etc. But such questions get deleted because they're not exactly directly about programming.
2) For very specific coding questions, I found it more efficient to just look online and the response usually pops up on stack overflow or css tricks, without needing to deal with the search function here.
3) When it comes to responding, as I'm very new at coding, most of the technical questions are still way over my head even to explore trying to answer. Usually the answer is to do the search and tell somebody "look, this has already been discussed last year" and share a link - which is frankly boring. And not to mention that a lot of questions are not even sincere, but rather people fishing for badges.

Answer 10

Janning⭐ Wow!!! 😲
Amazing answer! Thanks for contributing to SoloLearn Community...😃👍🏻

Answer 11

Your question title is asking for the answerer's perspective.
But your question content is talking about an asker's perspective.
Can I know which perspective are you actually asking for?

Answer 12

As much as it is still relevant to ask questions in this forum, we still must desist from abusing the system. i am grateful for the people in this forum who take their time to read the posts and reply to them as their contributions are always on point. As an answer to your question, YES it is important to post , but great caution and revision must be considered. we must research our problems before flooding the app with questions that were asked and answered many times before. we shouldnt be lazy to do our research personally i havent had to ask here as most of my questions had been asked before.

Answer 13

, explainations given by peers in Sololearn are better than Google. Sometimes, it is vice versa . Depends on the situation

Answer 14

Well internet throws things at your face and is like "Take this sucker if you don't understand it is none of my business" (except maybe StackOverflow, but that is because of similar mechanics to this Q&A section)
As for here, you can clarify until you're clear.
Just saying, quite a few people here are developers who have been working for years and are pretty much experts in this field. That is good to consider too.

Answer 15

I think there are lots of improvements that can be made to help improve this part of the app. One thing i believe would help would be to integrate search when trying to post(something like predictive text for posts, or matching tags with already answered posts). Or by having more filtering options(ie language,general questions,questions with example codes etc.)Aside from the many, many useless posts, it for me is a great way to learn more about things not on my radar. If i see a post with a good question and am curious myself of the answer, i usually learn something trying to help, or just follow the post and wait for someone more informed to chime in. Sometimes I really have a hard time thinking of how to find an answer because i cant explain the question to google correctly, thats where the ability to attach sample codes is really great. Also as mainly an ios user i have no acess to page posts, so this is where i can view more than just codes and comments from the community.

Answer 16

[1/5]
Q) "Do you you still consider important to contribute to SoloLearn Forum?!"
A) I should probably consider retiring my moderator badge if I said "no"...

Answer 17

[2a/5]
Regarding getting help with coding problems...
Although these types of questions tend to not get as much attention in the form of upvotes (compared to more conceptual questions), I feel like this is a very important role for this forum.
The comparison to StackOverflow has been made many times before. I think this is comparatively more welcoming to new learners, both in terms of returning encouraging responses and actual barriers to entry/posting (which could be a good or a bad thing as someone pointed out earlier).

Answer 18

[2b/5]
The comparison to requesting support from a typical IT support specialist is less commonly made, but I think it's worth highlighting. When you submit a support ticket, the team receiving your ticket needs some basic things:
- starting details (i.e. platform/environment/pre-conditions)
- running details (i.e. what did you do, what steps did you take, what code did you run)
- expected results
- actual results
All of this information is necessary to be able to reproduce the issue(s). Sometimes we've seen similar issues often enough to be able to guess what the cause is and how to fix it, but we wouldn't know for sure unless we had sufficient details.
In this way, this forum is a good way to train people how to help their IT folks help them ... slightly broader than just helping people learn how to program.

Answer 19

[4/5]
Regarding waiting for a quality reply...
There are some additional skills this touches on: While using a search engine shows that you can be self-sufficient, knowing when to pause & ask for help is also a good skill for working on teams. Sometimes it's more time efficient to just be brave & ask so that the world can progress & everyone can move forward with whatever they're doing with minimal friction. It takes practice to feel out the balance between when it's too early to reach out for help (insufficient diligence performed), when it might be on the late side, & where the sweet spot is.
Since we're not literally on a single team working toward a common goal together, this forum tends more toward the spend-more-time-up-front end.
If no one responds, maybe the question could be better formatted, everyone's busy, or you're the smartest person in the room at that time (no one who's paying attention knows the answer).
There's no one better to champion your own goals than you, so tenacity is valuable.

Answer 20

Janning⭐ thank you for a great answer thread, reflecting experience from both team work and support roles in a professional setting! 👍👍😊
Highlights the importance a crucial quality - to learn how to get help and how to be helpful to others ❣️
🎈