Why do so most contributors to MATLAB Answers have a similar condescending attitude to the "Comic Book Store Guy" from the Simpsons? That is, an utter disdain for beginners. If anyone would like to provide some ACTUAL help, I'd be forever grateful.

If you're reading this, then you're prepared to spend a couple of minutes tailoring a response (even just slightly) to my question. Almost every "answer" I have received on this forum has been a link to documentation or answer threads I've already read and tried, or are barely relevant, if at all.

I wasn't born knowing everything like everyone else here ...

[Rik]

1 out of 4. I would not call that 'almost every answer'. Unless you have a habit of deleting questions I don't see what your problem is.

You should also not forget that English may not be someone's first (or even second/third language) and there may exist large cultural differences.

And, since I expect your ire is mostly due to this thread: you would be surprised how little effort some people put in. Many questions could trivially be solved by a Google search. So assuming people haven't already read a guide in the documentation is not a strange thing to do. If you do a tag search for 'no attempt' and 'doit4me' you can see for yourself.

So I don't share your view that Matlab Answers is a horrible place. It is a place where you can get free help from strangers, who do this as a hobby.

[Peter Beringer]

I don't think it's "a horrible place", just a lot of the responses I've read on all kinds of threads are getting close. The only problem I've encountered with any of my own questions would be a lack of answers/comments, lack of detail, or the assumption that I haven't looked or tried anything already, etc., which can seem condescending. This (fairly early) opinion is based almost entirely on what I've read elsewhere, not on my own questions. And it has nothing to do with language; in fact, those with apparently basic English skills give the most concise and direct answers, and are probably less likely to word a response in a condescending manner.

That people would come to MATLAB Answers first, before reading and attempting themselves, wasn't something that occurred to me. Perhaps they're in some kind of rush. But unless something is tagged with "no attempt" or "doit4me" or something indicating that the contributor needs help very quickly, it would be far more considerate to give them the benefit of the assumption that they have made at least some effort. The inverse is tantamount to taking people for idiots, and I've read a lot of that on this forum. It's disappointing, that is all.

That said, I've come across MANY great answers to all sorts of questions I've had. Interestingly, none of those answers that I've found genuinely helpful was given by an apparent "know-all" in a condescending fashion.

I'm sure I'll get the hang of the place.

[Rik]

In my experience low effort is responded to with low effort. I don't have much to add to what I posted.

If you don't think it's a horrible place, why put it in the tag? In the recent activity page I can confirm you added the tag yourself:

[Peter Beringer]

Wow, I did too. Sorry. I really shouldn't try to work when I'm sick, I do some seriously stupid stuff out of a horrible combination of exhaustion and frustration. Like starting this entire thread. My question would've been better phrased as "How can I write a good question that won't provoke undesirable responses?" Frustration and illness got the better of me. And I hated seeing people treated in the manner I had seen just prior to submitting this "question" ...

[Walter Roberson]

We post the link on how to write good questions a lot

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/6200-tutorial-how-to-ask-a-question-on-answers-and-get-a-fast-answer

[Peter Beringer]

Thanks for the great link. Wish I'd managed to see it earlier. When I went looking for a help guide on questions, I only came across the Community Participation Guidelines and thought that was the extent of it, it didn't occur to me to look at the forum itself. That is a FAR more comprehensive guide. Cheers.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

That people would come to MATLAB Answers first, before reading and attempting themselves, wasn't something that occurred to me. Perhaps they're in some kind of rush.

Having answered... several... questions here, I can unfortunately report that rather a lot of people come here and post their homework assignments without even asking a question, let alone saying anything about what aspect it is they would like assistance with.

We get called... unpleasant things... by people whom we refuse to write complete honors projects for... seldom with more than 5 days notice before it is due. And I do mean complete -- documentation and all, with the person contributing little more than the general topic of the question, and providing no ideas. Some of them specifically say that they want us to invent new techniques that haven't been published before.

We get some many questions where the person does not tell us anything about what they have tried, that we just throw a FAQ at a lot of questions, cf .

• a lot of people have not tried anything and do not seem to have any intention of trying anything. Some of them have said explicitly that there is no point in them bothering to do any part of the question when they can just post the question and someone will (or at least might) answer it for them.
• a lot of people have no idea how to approach the question. Some of them it is because they do not understand much of anything about the application topic; others of them it is because they are quite weak on programming. The people who do not understand the application topic... they tend to hope that we will, in a few paragraphs, explain to them what they did not understand from a month or more of university-level lectures.
• It is not uncommon for people who are struggling to understand a topic, to believe that what they really need to understand the topic, is for us to post a complete solution to that particular assignment. Not for us to explain concepts and show examples to work through the ideas to provide the basis for them putting the last parts together themselves, but instead for us to solve the whole thing. The claim being that at after having seen it all worked out, that they will understand it well enough to be able to go away and write their own version without copying ours. We have... doubts.

Our experience has, by and large, been that the people with experience who have taken the time to read through past material, tend to start by explaining why the previous material does not meet their needs.

[Steven Lord]

In addition to what Walter wrote, there are over 290,000 questions on MATLAB Answers. [Actually, I think that figure on the main MATLAB Answers page is low; I'm not sure it counts questions that have been deleted or questions that are unanswered.] That can be both a blessing and a curse. For most of the common questions (and a fair number of uncommon questions) someone has probably already written an answer that provides a lot of value about that topic. So it's easy (and quick) to point people to those valuable answers. The repository of knowledge in Answers is the blessing.

The curse, of course, is finding those valuable answers. So sometimes Answers posters serve almost like librarians, pointing people to the right location in the stacks where the books they'll need are located rather than telling the patron the answer. In some cases the "librarian" may not know the answer just how to find it. I don't have a background in signal processing but I do know how to come up with potentially relevant or important keywords from some signal processing questions and search through Answers and documentation.

If Rik is correct that this post was prompted by the answer posted by KSSV on this post, reading through your message I likely would have posted what KSSV did, possibly with an additional link to the section on Animation in the documentation. The reasons why I would have posted that is your use of the key term "animate" along with the fact that your code did not use imwrite (one of the functions I would choose to use when doing animation) anywhere, leading me to suspect you were not aware of that function. The Support team's answer shows a small example of how to use imwrite along with a link to the documentation for more information.

[Walter Roberson]

290000 is the number of Answered questions. There are over 420000 Questions. We are currently running at about 200 new Questions per day (excluding the ones that get closed or deleted.)

[Peter Beringer]

For the second time ... this has nothing to do with my questions, but responses to others' I've seen while browsing for the information I need. The example codes are often completely unannotated, so it can become a lengthy process of going through every line, documentation for function calls I don't recognise, when a two or three word comment/label in the code would make all the difference; i.e. "this does this".

I'm learning how this place works.

[Walter Roberson]

Peter Beringer:

You are not the first person who has wanted to place requirements on how the volunteers answer queries.

There has, for example, been a portion of people who have felt strongly that the volunteers should restrict themselves to posting complete solutions to the questions asked, and that volunteers should never ever try to explain better methods or make recommendations about why what the user is asking to do is a good idea. Those people have often said that we should assume that the posters Have A Good Reason, and that we should do what they asked instead of lecturing them.

That, for example, if someone asks how to automatically make all variables global and generate variable references on the fly, that the role of the volunteers should never be to talk about the numerous ways either of those ideas lead to problems -- that instead the rule of the volunteers should be to write code to pre-process MATLAB files to detect all variables (including dynamically generated ones) and automatically make them global. Without ever questioning why. Because we should always assume that the person knows what they are doing... even though the person did not take any time to explain their reasons and gave no indication that they have ever read the previously posted material on the topic.

There have been other posters who felt strongly that everyone should get a substantive reply within 20 minutes, no matter what time of day they post. That they had a right to a fast personally explained answer, because they paid for the software. Well, because somebody paid for the software. And that the software should be free since Python is free, but that even if it were free they would still have a right to a fast answer, because Mathworks is a commercial company.

My mental response to those posters has often been along the lines of "So... who is going to bell the cat?"

The existing volunteers are already overloaded. I, for example, am making more than 40 posts per day, and I already often stay up all night helping people. My family thinks I should cut back to about 10% of what I do now.

Where exactly are we going to get those new volunteers to provide those individually crafted responses (within 20 minutes, covering all time zones) ?

MATLAB Answers is not a service bureau. People volunteer here largely to have a feeling of contributing to helping other people understand things, not to do other people's work for them, on demand. The volunteers largely prefer a teaching role, rather than to be unpaid flunkies. The people who explain their situation and express specific questions about what they do not understand, get more attention from the volunteers.

[Peter Beringer]

I feel like I'm still being misunderstood. I'm extremely grateful for any answer given; I was just shocked by how badly people looking for a slightly deeper explanation were being treated - and I don't mean people clearly looking for people to "do their work for them", but very basic elaboration on an answer. I'm new to MATLAB Answers because I finally came up against something I couldn't figure out for myself ... so, I'm still very much learning the "culture" of the forum. People don't HAVE to answer questions, so I thought that the people who did, did so because they had the interest/time/etc., so to just get a link without another word of explanation can seem dismissive (maybe I'm too sensitive), especially when some effort has been put in by the person asking the question (again ... I'm NOT referring to questions I've asked). I'm not saying links to other threads aren't helpful either - it's how I've found most of the information helpful to me. And I agree that a "lazy" question is deserving of a "lazy" response.

I don't "expect" replies at all, let alone within some arbitrary and impossible timeframe - that's just ridiculous, and I resent your implication that I share that attitude. I thought people would reply because they wanted to, or enjoy it, I never thought there would be contributors who felt obliged to answer questions.

I certainly don't have "demands" on how questions should be answered, that's completely unreasonable. But having a preference for helpfully commented code (which I've found on many threads) that can save me venturing down a rabbit warren of often distracting information is not a "demand".

Again, I'm still learning ... and this thread has taught me A LOT about how to avoid writing a question that will be received badly.

I really appreciate the insights. Thank you.