Please help solve my problem!

#1

Alice: Hello! I have a problem. Please solve it.

Barbara: Umm… what exactly is your problem?

Alice: Not sure, I don’t understand it.

Barbara: Can you at least try to explain?

Alice: It’s like this other thing someone did. I want to make an exact copy!

Barbara: Aha, it looks very similar to one of our examples, have you checked them out?

Alice: It requires logic, not checking out examples!

Barbara: Ok, have a look at the documentation, it should give you a better understanding of what you can achieve, and you’ll be able to ask a more specific question.

Alice: …see above, I grow weary of having to repeat myself

Barbara: Can you at least provide a partial solution that we can have a loot at and edit, a jsfiddle or something?

Alice: Oh, I really wish I could, truly… but it’s far too much effort

Does this sound familiar at all?

I was once a newbie. I knew little to nothing about 3d graphics not so long ago. Heck, there’s a ton I still learn every day. You’re new, you don’t know where to start - I get it. We’ve all been there.

When you ask a question - realize that you’re not entitled to other people time. You do not pay them. Likewise, when people answer your questions - they don’t expect anything in return. However, it’s common sense that you would take time to:

  1. Research your problem and understand it
  2. Describe the problem in sufficient detail
  3. Provide the current state of your solution, if possible

If you just dump your 5000 lines of code here and say “here, there’s a problem somewhere in there” - no one will want to help you, you will only create a poor impression. Try to isolate your problem, strip it down to bare minimum. If there’s some other code that’s absolutely necessary - try to mark it as such, to focus attention on what matters.

If you do ask a poor question, and someone answers it - they haven’t done you a favor really. They validated your approach, next time - you will be more likely to ask a poor question again, and if you get a push back for doing that - you will be confused, like “hey, that other nice guy helped me last time, what’s up with these meanies”.

Very often you will find yourself answering your own question, when you spend time to formulate it properly. A good question is like a cross-word puzzle, it’s can be fun to solve for someone. A bad question is like a shit job.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions, just, please, spend the effort to ask them well.

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#2

When checking out the forum for interesting topics, the combination of the title, tag and your avatar really confused me :eyes:
but then I checked out other posts and I think I know where you’re coming from :sweat_smile:
Do you think the post form should be more strict, with more warnings and guidelines, for example like on github?

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#3

It doesn’t require logic, it requires ONE LOGIC!!! Everybody knows that logic is a discrete quantity that can only assume INTEGER values.

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#4

TBH, I think it’s okay as it is. github and stackoverflow are already somewhat strictly regulated. I like the idea of having a place with less restrictions and more freestyle.

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#5

Wonder where u picked that from :smile:

Im mean, we’re not supposed to do others homework or their job, if they got hired for a project they would know what is required and not say they could do it in first place, just to let others do the job for free. (the major part)

Some even think the community gets paid and is responsible to solve their problem, worse when they get rude if an answer doesn’t solve their logic issue.

We don’t need to be strict, but always asking about everything never gets you really anywhere. I rather spend hours or days on a issue till i find a solution myself, this way you really learn it, but especially learn how to solve issues or find/create a solution that might even get better than the common standard, and not just to apply some recipes and snippets.

There are so many questions answered with links to the docs, wich get asked over and over again or the OP could have just searched up in few seconds. What should be expected at least though is to put some effort in the post, not just a one liner that even fits as copy in the title.

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#6

Straight from here: I need a tool to create polygons :slight_smile:

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#7

It was a rhetorical question :joy:

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#8

I think we must be careful not to attach this too much to specific users. After all, we would like newcomers to feel welcome. But they may need some “upbringing”, and I have begun to draw the line earlier for my own efforts, to not exhaust myself doing others’ work or letting them distract me with their begging…

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#9

@EliasHasle
Good to have such friendly members in our community like you. No joking or kidding, I’m saying that seriously.

About my previous post here. I wouldn’t believe that such a passage about logics is possible, and the others who have read the main post, I’m sure, will think that it’s just @Usnul’s imagination. But actually it’s not, and here it is in real. The thread about the tool for polygons a whole is a perfect example of how not to ask questions and how not to behave.
Upbringing? Here you are, please, welcome to the real world. You (not you, Elias, I’m saying in general :slight_smile: ) made a mistake, it was exposed to the others - some of them can laugh at you, some say something constructive, and if you’re more or less a responsible person, you’ll make conclusions and next time will think twice before to do something. And the other newcomers, seeing your experience, will try to ask and behave better. Shame is a good teacher.

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#10

Yes and it would be better to not direct link to the post, since that example conversation is a little mocking, addressing the topic generally is fine. We should consider that in some cases users already tried a lot and got frustrated with the issue, it isn’t a excuse to ask with low effort and being impatient/rude, some people are just frustrated while others are like that generally and might even not tried to solve it or just google the issue.

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#11

In this particular case I think cultural differences and the good old language barrier played a part, and it’s always nice to be mindful of that, although it shouldn’t be used as an excuse by posters to roll around on the floor of the super market because daddy won’t let them have candy on a Wednesday.

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#12

It is good to know I am appreciated. :blush: Because I can be a real hassle sometimes… (or so I’ve heard.) I appreciate your contributions to the community too, as well as seeing that you read and like a lot of my posts.

I do not approve of mockery as a pedagogical tool. You don’t know beforehand whether the respondent will feel ashamed, maltreated or amused, and only the last one is really good. I encourage everyone to seek peaceful solutions and treat each other kindly. Although I may… no, I do sometimes, too often, make myself guilty of mockery or bad conduct. Please “arrest” me when I do! (In public or PM.)

Agreed. :+1:

1 Like
#13

Ok. What’s your safe word?

I’ve had a bit of experience in a few different tech communities, this problem rises quite frequently. Shame, pain, etc. can be effective tools, like @prisoner849 said. I do not wish to resort to such thing personally, as it tends to have unintended consequences. “Education” is hard sometimes. :woman_teacher:

My main point was to highlight the problem of “low effort questions”, I see it more as a matter of respect, if you have invested so little effort into your question, and 15 people have read it - you have been rude to 15 people, even if none of them have answered it, because you treated their time as being less valuable. :sunglasses:

If there was an epidemic of poor quality answers flooding the forum - I am sure I would be just as bothered by that. Alas, such is not the case. :woman_shrugging:

I did not mean to call anyone out here, or make people feel offended. I believe in the idea of three.js forum being a diverse and inclusive space where people can feel safe and be free from aggression, both macro and micro. :mermaid:

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#14

I don’t have one. Just tell me when I do something wrong, so that I can try to correct it.

#15

I highly approve of the use of emojis :unicorn: they give a sentence a entirely different touch such as:

„I don’t know how it works, please help“

„I don’t know how it works, please help :cry::sob::broken_heart:“

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#16

I too, get sometimes irritated with uncooperative posters. I also get frustrated when their behavior is rewarded by well-meaning people who help them despite their bad manners or low effort (or maybe I just have a lower tolerance). Luckily I discovered that there’s a way to mute those threads. Sometimes I’d rather mute it than let myself get frustrated and come across as rude. It’s the button below “Bookmark”:

43-AM

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