how to use a forum...

i am spending a lot of time in many different message boards. since 1993. before the internet.
a few points i have learned in that time: if i want to get help from others (and not rude stupid answers), you need to

- write a friendly hello
- explain your problem exactly
- show that you already spent some time in analysing the problem (for example by explaining that you checked the manual, what in the manual, the documentation of whatever etc)
- explain who you are (because if someone helps you, he wants to know whom he is helping, in our business this is even more importand!)
- write your name somewhere...

People who have a username like "xcrtlml" and no profile and writing something like

"i can not manage to do automatic report, help me" will have it hard to get any serios answer... because it makes a lot of work to "understand what you exactly mean", write you a "please explain exactly what you are doing", get maybe another answer with missing informations just to help you for free will not receive usefull informations at all (exept someone from the operator will spent some time to help you).

and: a forum is a "get help, help others" system. If i look sometimes on the profiles of users, you find 20 messages of 20 messages with all messages having a "i can not do this, i am lazy, i dont want read the f*cking  manual and overal i even dont want to think about how i could solve my problem" content... if everybody handles his "forum" experience like this, nobody is going to help you! So if you get help, help others.

Wolfgang the Wolf

P.S. Admin, please delete this post if you find it not adequate ;-)