Hi, and welcome to the forum,
nwidesigns.
I do appreciate that you are willing to help, but you may have gotten started poorly. You've made two mistakes:
- Answering a question that was solved
eight 21 months ago. (Nothing really wrong with that, but perhaps not the best use of your time.)
- In your first post, attacking someone with a high status in the forum (almost 10000 posts, and a Moderator)
Both of those mistakes might have been avoided if you had "lurked" a bit here to see how things work before posting. Of course we also expect that everyone has read the
Survival Guide. Even if you hadn't, you would have learned that by lurking.
nittyjee wrote:Moderator or not that was an ignorant reply RoryOF.
There's sometimes more to providing support on the forum than just answering specific questions, and that's recognizing what the user's experience level is and helping them improve their skills. In the long run, the user becomes much more effective, since asking question after question, particularly without even attempting a search first, is a very slow way to develop (in this case) a spreadsheet. However, recognizing the user's experience level is often tricky since that information is typically not provided in the question. But people who have been doing this a long time (almost 4 years for
RoryOF) are often pretty good at judging that and understanding how to best help the person. You'll note that
ctrot did not ask any additional questions after receiving the "work it out" advice and thus has presumably learned how the "&" works, which is more a good deal valuable than just learning how to add text at the beginning. I will often provide a link to a relevant tutorial or other documentation instead of a more direct answer because I think this helps not only the OP, but others who may have similar questions. But it depends on my mood and how much time I have available that day. This is, after all, free support, and if someone doesn't like it, I'll refund double their money back. Your search that found the
Adding text to the beginning of every cell? topic was good. Many new posters are unable (or unwilling) to do searches, even though this is the fastest way to get answers.
nwidesigns, you'll find that your opinions about the best way to help people will carry more weight here after you've gained the experience of answering several dozen questions. Note that
RoryOF has many thousand questions of experience. Unfortunately I know of no "how to help people on a forum" guide other than lurking, since forum protocol varies.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way is good reading. It addresses the issue from the "question" side instead of the "answer" side, but does provide insight into how some of the forums work. I'm sure you can dig something out of that to validate your "that was an ignorant reply" remark. But don't post a response here. It won't be well received, trust me.
The forum Volunteers and Moderators would love to have your help, but take some time and get to know us here at OOCF. Read some of the recent Q's and A's, then consider helping with a new or unsolved topic. And do be very careful about attacks toward people who have high status, since that isn't welcomed, as you've discovered. They will have numerous friends to support them unless their post is clearly inappropriate. There
are occasional comments by Moderators or other regulars that violate forum protocol, but they are very few, and those comments usually receive negative feedback from other peers.
keme wrote:So does someone come out as arrogant here, or even ignorant?
I think that perhaps "someone" does, while "someone else" do not, but again that's just me... ;)
+1
nwidesigns wrote:I will take my leave of this non-sense and look elsewhere for support.
I spent at least 30 minutes composing this reply in an attempt to persuade you to reconsider leaving. You could be a valuable addition to the community very soon. I do hope that my 30 minutes was not a waste of time.