Getting Pimped For FREE!

Yeah, I know what you mean.
It is good to get thanks and feedback, but it doesn't always happen.
Of course one answer is to save your best stuff for the deserving. Sometimes I'll just unsubscribe if I feel it's going nowhere, othertimes I'll go the extra mile.
It does work both ways of course and I've had help from the forum too (but of course I always try to say thanks)
Del
BTW Is a Fredski anything like a Jetski?
_{(scampers off to hide in secret cat nest)}

A Fredski is an online name I've used for years. No one mixes it up with others

Too sentimental for your own good. S.M.

Another point to add to that is the fact that with most threads that get quite involved, with all kinds of possible solutions presented for the OP, from so many members... rarely do they come back and give an update or a result to whatever was their particular problem. It would be nice to find out what happened. Perhaps I should start a thread with that in the title, to remind people to do us that courtesy.

Fredski, maybe you should have gone that route, and mentioned your point in your title. Your title, although clever and humorous , doesn't really get the message out there, unless they all open it and read it.

Oh sorry. I see that Del already commented on feedback. My bad.

Maybe we're being pumped more than being pimped? (But usually with not too much pomp.)

I post to a number of genealogical message boards and always reply in depth to people who ask for info about particular family lines. I'm amazed at how few people bother to say thanks for a reply that may have taken me 30 minutes or more to put together for them including links, files, etc. To me it is astonishing.

Poor manners (or lack of manners) seems to be a common phenomenon that crosses all fields.

Lani

When posters provide further useful feedback, or thanks for input, I tend to give them a GA, in the hope of encouraging such behavior.

Tornado bribery only makes things worse. I've recently come up with a more original approach. Before wasting my time for unappreciated responses, I try to figure out OP background and attitude from previous posts. If not enough data there I give poster the benefit of a doubt. Just once. But on naive posts I think I've had enough. Not every question deserves an answer. I just ignore. S.M.

"Don't vote. It only encourages them." (?)

Pimped? No. I usually find I get as much out of the process of contributing, and seeing what others contribute, if not more than the OP might have.

But then again I think "life" is about being useful - more so than getting 'pats on the head'. Nice, but not essential, as whatever the outcome, I'm more 'useful' as a result - even if that is learning when 'contributing' is a waste of effort.

But it is true some people need pats more than others. In my curmudgeonly view, this 'pats for pats sake' is a sizable problem in modern education thinking.

I absolutely get your point. But when someone has a problem and comes to CR4 they've usually exhausted most of their other resources. When someone takes their personal time and experience and solves that persons problems it isn't expecting too much to expect a "thank you".

To your point if people here were being paid then I'd completely agree with you, you're just doing your job. No special thanks should be expected. But how many times have you seen someone post a problem and you can tell they're fried and practically desperate to solve an issue? Then 5 to 10 guys offer solutions that remedy their problem. I don't think it's expecting to much for them to take 2 minutes to say, "thank you for your time, your input worked out for me".

No need to paraphrase the OP - ^{_{some don't like that.}}

Them coming back with "how it went" or what ended up working - I'd call a 'knowledge payback' - adequate thanks - no false platitudes uttered.

But what if all the advice was inapplicable? Or they chose the wrong advice? Went with the 'white noise' not the 'odd men out' who actually knew.

But overall; Rodriguez and CR4 circus antics aside;

'Thanks' freely given is one thing. Expecting it invites disappointment. Demanding it just breeds resentment.

It's human nature to expect thanks. Period.

Unless you're on some ethereal plane higher than Everyman. In which case, you subscribe to the principles of Nishkama Karma, as is preached in Gita.

And yes, disappointment is often part of the package.

"It's human nature to expect thanks. Period."

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." Mohandas Gandhi

It's also "human nature" to indulge in the 7 deadly sins <free test] and 'adjust' Commandments

As for "some ethereal plane higher than Everyman" - it's really not that big a reach.

But there's More!

"Mahatma Gandhi said that seven things will destroy us. Notice that all of them have to do with social and political conditions. Note also that the antidote of each of these "deadly sins" is an explicit external standard or something that is based on natural principles and laws, not on social values."

Wealth Without Work

Pleasure Without Conscience

Knowledge Without Character

Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics)

Science Without Humanity

Religion Without Sacrifice

Politics Without Principle

_{p.s. sorry about the delay in responding - I was enjoying a compulsory time-out as the result of 'contributing too often' - thankless aren't they.}

Paul Turner (Yale) has written a good article called "Cheating Viruses and Game Theory" that discusses an idea from evolutionary biology comparing human and virus behaviors. I've found it helpful in dealing with the frustration of trying to understand people who don't "pay back" in some respect. It goes like this:

Imagine that there are Suckers, Cheaters and Grudgers. Suckers always do favors regardless of anything. Cheaters never do any favors for anyone. Grudgers will do favors for people until a cheater does not return a favor then the Grudger will hold a grudge against that particular Cheater. The Suckers would not last and die out very quickly. The Cheaters would last for awhile, but once the Grudgers hold grudges against all of them, they can not survive. The Grudger turns out to be an evolutionarily stable strategy against sucker and cheat, in the sense that, in a population consisting largely of grudgers, neither cheat nor sucker will invade.

Just change "suckers" to "nice people" and "cheaters" to "ingrates," haha.