Within my limited capabilities I try to answer fellow Knimers’ questions. Half the time I get no response. The Forum would be a lot more useful if questioners would respond to answers. If the answer solved your problem make sure to mark it “solved” and add a brief explanation. If the answer did not help or was incomplete, please provide some detail. If you get several answers, make sure to identify which one you’re replying to. These responses will make the Forum more useful for all Knimers.
I always find it hilarious when someone responds 3 months later that they just got around to testing a workflow and it solved an issue perfectly and fixed their issue. Talk about a relaxed work environment!
If it helps, the rest of us who are trying to regularly help with our limited skills know that a user’s official number of “solutions” should always roughly be multiplied by 3 or 4.
@takbb Thanks. That’s useful, but doesn’t address everything I mentioned in my post. I’m really frustrated that so many people asking for help can’t seem to exhibit a little common courtesy. Doesn’t say much for the “community.”
I hear what you’re saying and I know this is one problem I definitely don’t have a solution for, @rfeigel. Yes it can be frustrating when you put your time and effort into helping somebody and you are left wondering why you bothered. But, the only consolation is knowing that there are people here who we do help, and maybe the solutions provided go on to assist others, even if we never hear from the OP again.
Sadly this is reflective of real communities and everyday life. There will always be the givers, the takers and those who balance both.
I’m reminded of an example from a place I was working about 5 years ago. I was in the office and it was about 5pm, but I wasn’t close to heading home; I had stuff that I wanted to get out of the way which I knew would keep me there until about 8pm. My boss, very apologetically forwarded me an email from one of the system users, who said they had a high level meeting at 9am the following morning and needed some information urgently. This was going to involve me having to do some investigations, and write a query and send in the form of an Excel spreadsheet (I didn’t have KNIME then, so it was a bit of a chore!). My immediate thought was “this user’s lack of organisation does not make this my priority” but of course I did it anyway. I spent a good couple of hours on it to get it right, and then continued with what I had previously been doing, before leaving the office that night about 10.30pm.
The following day I heard nothing. Nor the next. About a month later I bumped into the user whilst getting a coffee. We started a conversation about something else and I asked, “oh by the way, did that report give you what you needed?”. Their response ? “Oh sorry, I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet”. I wonder if they ever did look at it. I really did wonder why I had bothered.
Of course even here on the forum, lack of response and courtesy from others sometimes gets to me at times, but all we can do is keep trying to be helpful, and to me it is that helpfulness and willingness of people like you to try to assist that makes this the community it is. You are appreciated by the wider community even if you do not receive any acknowledgment from the individual.
I think that this gets amplified by the anonymity of the forum. Some users start thinking about the forum as “customer service” or a throwing questions into the “void” and getting back solutions.
I think it would be helpful to see some humanizing user details on each post. Like a user’s actual name, location, company, role, etc. Things like this will only escalate with the rapidly increasing online interaction with AI bots. (Although I personally continue to interact friendly with bots to get in good with our future digital overloards ) It would be helpful to see who you are interacting with, and that they are fellow users volunteering their time and help.
) It would be helpful to see who you are interacting with, and that they are fellow users volunteering their time and help.