Originally posted by Chris Stewart:
This example is exactly why people hate this place.
I'm drifting a bit from the topic here, but I think it's worth saying.
I've been signed up with this forum for less than a month. In that time, I've easily seen over a dozen people ask about sending, parsing, or otherwise working with Excel sheets in Servlets/JSPs -- many within days or hours of each other. I've personally answered this 3 or 4 times.
Seeing that Mr, Wenting has had 3600 posts and has been signed up since Oct of 2000. I think it's safe to say that he has probably seen that same question asked over a hundred times.
Experienced developers get tired of answering the same question over and over. The more experienced they are, the faster they will tire. Some will take the time to write a FAQ. Some, as Mr. Wenting has done will generously take the time to remind the asker that there is a way to search the list for the answer. Most, however, will just leave and not bother anymore.
Just about every list and forum I've ever seen has had a link to this essay:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#translations including this one. And yet, the majority of questions on every list and forum are questions that have already been asked and answered many times.
If people who don't want to check to see if a question has been answered before asking it hate a given forum and leave, it doesn't hurt the forum. If someone who knows enough to answer the better questions leaves because they've burned out due to the endless repetition caused by the former type, then the forum/list suffers.
Sometimes RTFM, STFW, or GIYF are the best answers.
