December 29th, 2008
It seems, that in holiday seasons seem to bring out the bad in people and lead them to really do daft things on forums. While I really don’t mind doing this stuff (or else I wouldn’t be there), it becomes quite frustrating after a while when you run out of telepathic power. Therefore please obey the following rules when asking for help:
Always take a detour to your manuals, help files or any web based help a vendor such as Adobe provides. Almost half of the questions can be answered this way. I will concede that it’s not always easy to find stuff, but things do get better.
Don’t always first ask whether there is some magic trick, instant button or plugin. After all, part of the creative process is finding solutions with the means at hand, not fictitious tools. And that requiring your brain and man power, is part of the reason why stylish promos and effects-ladden movies cost so much money.
For the life of it, don’t cross-post the same question on a hundred forums. The community isn’t that big and someone will always find you. If you are posting on a healthy, frequented forum, you can be sure to get some help. Otherwise it’s merely a waste of time – yours and ours. We need to keep track of multiple posts and you will need to close them up or make sense of a ton of possibly contradictory and confusing hints.
When you ask technical questions, provide as detailed info about the hardware you use, how it is configured and what specific software components go along with it, such as specific Quicktime CoDecs. And of course make sure you have read the system requirements to begin with. People all too often make the mistake of buying the latest Mac powerhouses and then plan on using After Effects 6.5 on it with P2 files from their shiny new camera. This naturally won’t work quite that well.
Don’t ever say “I’ve thought of everything. It must be the program!”. That’s the most ridiculous thing you can ever do. Modern computers are highly complex systems with layers and layers of code running on top of each other, and you never know where it breaks. If you really think you can handle it, then why even trouble yourself with posting a question at all?
Never ever make any assumptions about software development being easy. Bugs are part of the game and any statements along the lines “This is an easy feature, they could have fixed it in this version.” are utterly misplaced. You cannot even make such claims for a single plugin, when you haven’t seen it in its earliest pre-release form. I seriously consider such statements bullshit and have the scars to prove it.
Beyond that I will not cling too much to netiquette or false politeness. It’s nice when people say “Thank you!”, but it can just be as unproductive when being unable to “spell it out” prevents people from getting the help they require. On the other hand, brainless ranting will not get you anything, either. If you don’t like someone on a personal level or a company behind a product, at least acknowledge that he/they may be just the one(s) that can solve your problem and establish a formalized relationship or don’t post at all.
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