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From the Header in the VB Forum...
" 4. If the question is a inappropriate then click the 'vote to remove message' button
Insults, slap-downs and sarcasm isn't welcome. Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid. "
Remove the A in point 4 and change Isn't to Aren't in the next line
Otherwise I agree with the sentiments.
Indeed I try my best to clarify when there is confusion, I do not denigrate for lack of English, merely for lack of thinking.
(I am oft guilty of this crime and have suffered accordingly, but with good grace).
------------------------------------
"When Belly Full, Chin Hit Chest"
Confucius 502BC
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Dalek Dave wrote: I do not denigrate for lack of English, merely for lack of thinking.
Very much true. The bottomline of the story is not to hurt them for lack of knowledge but the lack of interest or initiative to put honest efforts and a humble endeavor to think and come out and get started.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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Wow. I was on fire. 
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I assume you're operating on Australian time right now, and not Canadian time.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Onyx
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See sleep isn't overrated 
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Dalek Dave wrote: I try my best to clarify when there is confusion
WTF? You are a daily sourccce of ccconfusion and despair. 
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
The quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get.
Show formatted code inside PRE tags, and give clear symptoms when describing a problem.
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Dalek Dave wrote: Indeed I try my best to clarify when there is confusion, I do not denigrate for lack of English, merely for lack of thinking. (I am oft guilty of this crime and have suffered accordingly, but with good grace).
Hi Dave,
Indeed, I often find you contribute a delightful confusion in the Lounge, a confusion laced with top-notes of whimsy, and humour, and your wacky way with words.
Hopefully your gear-shift doesn't stick when you give techical advice and response on the technical forums.
In your very honor I have coined the neologism "dalekomania," although it doesn't quite feel right, because, in this century, the word "mania" has some negtive overtones related to psychiatry's usurping its semantic domain, but "dalekofervid" or "dalekostatic" just don't seem to work, and "dalekolalic" is just too obvious.
And who, my loquacious friend, does not "suffer accordingly" who does not play the accordion and, thus, suffer "accordionly" ?
best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
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Using the default version of SA that comes with Debian, most of my CP reply notifies get flagged as spam:
Content preview: CodeProject Forum Notification Do not hit 'reply' to this
email: To reply, click here. Pete O'Hanlon has posted a reply to your message
at "The Lounge": [...]
Content analysis details: (5.3 points, 5.0 required)
pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
-0.0 SPF_HELO_PASS SPF: HELO matches SPF record
-0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record
1.8 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_20 BODY: HTML: images with 1600-2000 bytes of words
0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
1.7 MIME_HTML_ONLY BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
1.8 MIME_QP_LONG_LINE RAW: Quoted-printable line longer than 76 chars
The original message was not completely plain text, and may be unsafe to
open with some email clients; in particular, it may contain a virus,
or confirm that your address can receive spam. If you wish to view
it, it may be safer to save it to a file and open it with an editor.
Presumably the content could be tweaked slightly, to stop it triggering those rules
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benjymous wrote: Presumably the content could be tweaked slightly, to stop it triggering those rules
benjymous wrote: The original message was not completely plain text, and may be unsafe to open with some email clients; in particular, it may contain a virus,
I'm unaware of any modern email client that actually allows javascript or ActiveX controls to be run. If the only way to make SpamAssassin happy is stop sending HTML based emails then I'm afraid SpamAssassin will have to stay grumpy.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I think it's mostly paranoid about images, since those can contain tracking links, and such.
I guess I'll just add it to the whitelist for my site - just figured it was worth noting, in case other ISPs are using SA
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For awhile Thunderbird was identifying CP's Daily News as possible spam, but I've got it trained now.
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I see you'v added that one to the forums, I like it 
But (of course there is a but) in the C# forum its marked as a question.
Perhaps thats intended but I get the feeling it's not since we can't reply to it
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I believe it should carry the i icon with the tooltip 'Admin' instead.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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I like it too. I do have two comments:
- sticky messages take votes but no replies; seems inconsistent to me.
- we now have three kinds of programming forums: those without stickies, those with "how to ask a question", and those with both "how to ask a qiestion" and "how to answer a question".
Three suggestions:
- threat all programming forums identically, with two stickies;
- make them all come from a single location, without copy&paste, so future changes appear everywhere;
- offer two buttons on the reply page, leading to a "how to ask" and "how to answer" text popup.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
The quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get.
Show formatted code inside PRE tags, and give clear symptoms when describing a problem.
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Luc Pattyn wrote: sticky messages take votes but no replies; seems inconsistent to me.
Done on purpose so that a Sticky at the top of a forum won't create a thread that takes 5 pages to wade through before you get to the interesting stuff.
Having the stickies come from a single location is an excellent idea but these are stop-gap measures. We'll be able to do something along those lines soon.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: so that a Sticky at the top of a forum won't create a thread
I knew that, however allowing votes seems wrong, since that is against the tradition you want to impose where 1-votes need explaining. To me, no reply means no 1-vote/2-vote, hence means no voting at all. If you only want 5-votes, then don't show the 1 to 4 digits!
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
The quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get.
Show formatted code inside PRE tags, and give clear symptoms when describing a problem.
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I've already reported that allowing voting on administrative announcements doesn't make sense at any level. It doesn't matter if someone is pleased with it or not. They're just supposed to follow the points in the sticky to be here.
It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini
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Every member can add sticky votes to their blogs so I've not removed the ability to vote on them. Yes, I could, just for non-blogs, but it's very low on the priority list.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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This should be fixed within a couple of hours (depending on caching)
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I note with interest how I am gravitating toward very frequent use of StackOverFlow as a venue to find answers to technical questions, just as I once gravitated toward the MS-server forums on C#, WindowsForms, WindowsForms.Controls. Like most of you, I imagine, I also maintain a list of certain blogs (some by MS employees, some not) which have proven themselves to be invaluable resources. My long "disenchantment" with MSDN is currently being modified by being able to find some valuable "walk-throughs," but a lot of that "disenchantment," for me was the user experience of the site itself (slowness of response, inability to filter results, wide dispersion of results), and that UX seems to be gradually improving.
From my point of view the presence of certain remarkable well-informed, articulate, and patiently generous individuals (for example Pete O'Hanlon, Luc Patyn, Mark Salsbury, on CP forums now, Marc Gravell on the C# firing-line on StackOverFlow; in the past, on MS Forums, the incomparable Nicholas Paldino ("a river unto his people"), Bob Powell, and, presently, Jon Skeet, and many others) often "lit up" these groups. imho providing an exemplary focal point for them that encouraged others to be proactive. imho these folks demonstrate "collegiality."
That such individuals appear, then disappear after a while, seems only natural given they are volunteers. For me : to see someone like Nicholas Paldino spewing thoughtful answers on the MS forums (in several topic areas !) constantly for a period of years at a great volume was near miraculous !
When I consider the current state and patterns of usage of the CP technical forums, I see a general decline in frequency of usage. And I see a pattern of frequent responses that often "blow off" the poster indirectly or blatantly, with subtle humor, or direct insult : sometimes these responses offer a smidgen of help but are at the same time accompanied by either a subtle or blatant insult to the intelligence of the user.
No one doubts that it is frustrating to sort through many incoming questions which, indeed, ARE stupid, are inappropriate, which indicate such a profound ignorance of basics that the person really does need to be told to get a good book and start studying. And no one doubts it is irritating to review many posts which request (some probably in an arrogant way suggesting a sense of entitlement) other people to "write their code" or "figure out their code." Yes, the old "urgentz, send me the codez" format.
I personally feel there is a direct correlation between the frequent expression of insult and put-down on these forums, and the decline in usage, and I feel (presumptuous of me to say this, I know) that I'd like to see CP, my favorite C# site in the universe, better served.
At the same time as I say this, you may be asking well : "why don't you put your money where your mouth is and moderate yourself ?"
It seems to me there are several options :
1. if lively frequently used technical forums are important to CP (for me the "meat" of CP is the articles, everything else is "dressing"), and assuming CP is making a solid revenue stream : why doesn't CP hire editors for the forums. Easy for me to say 
2. why cannot a "filtering system" be implemented, similarly to the one now in place for articles where forum questions are screened for gross unacceptability before being posted, or (as on StackOverFlow) are edited.
My opinion is that it less harmful (primo non nocere) for someone to receive a form reply stating their question is not appropriate for the forum than it is to allow it be posted and then be used as a convenient dumping ground by certain people who seem to "get off" on publicly sneering at others use of language or lack of basic fundamental knowledge.
Finally, my opinion is that anyone who responds frequently to posts on technical forums with only "blow offs" and no attempt whatsoever to relate to the questioner and the question, no matter how strange it is, should be "banned" from the forum.
Lastly, my opinion is that some of the exchanges in the Lounge while often involving exchanges of volleys of verbal insults and put-downs actually have useful content technically that would be invaluable to have up on the technical forums : in my opinion this technical content (as seen, for example, in recent arguments that have posted code showing "here's the way I did this" and then provoked active debate on the merits of that code or alternative techniques) is then "submerged" in the tidal waves of ephemera that propagate through the Lounge (that's not a put down : I think the Lounge is exactly for "ephemera").
My motivation in writing this is just that I would like to see CP enjoying the same dynamism and energy I see over at StackOverFlow.
I like CP as it is (it's "worth its weight in gold"), and this is not a complaint !
best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
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Bill,
Thanks for your comments.
We've been unhappy with our forum offering for a long time and we are nearing the end of a project that will rework the way we provide question/answer forums for our members.
We hear you loud and clear.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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BillWoodruff wrote:
I personally feel there is a direct correlation between the frequent expression of insult and put-down on these forums, and the decline in usage, and I feel (presumptuous of me to say this, I know) that I'd like to see CP, my favorite C# site in the universe, better served.
I totally agree with you; could not have written this better myself.
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Well said Bill. I believe that Chris and the team are taking a two pronged approach to rejuvenating the site. On one hand, the incomparable Sean Ewington is heading up a group of volunteers who are trying to help new authors release quality articles. These people act as mentors, and offer advice on how to improve article quality, and this strategy seems to be working.
I await the forum improvements with great interest, and expect it to be a huge leap forward owing to the way that the team have innovated in CP in the past.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Onyx
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How about an award for The Worst Pending Article of the Year? It would work like this:
If you nominate an article, that nomination would replace any prior nomination that exists for your CP account. In November, all nominated articles are put up for a general vote by the CP user population (gold and platinum only). In the first week of January of the following year, the top 10 voted articles get featured in the newsletter and the author of the absolute worst article gets a certificate and an award listing in his profile.
The icon (and the certificate watermark) can be Bob in a clown suit.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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