DYOR

[woofgang]

how many times do we have to tell people to do their own research before it sinks in?

[andy hughes]

As many times as you like - the people to whom you are adressing your comments don't think it applies to them! That's human nature - it applies to smoking, drinking, drugs, dieting, anything, up to and including questioning on here - you'll never stop it, so the best thing is to just ignore questions that you feel are simply lazy research.

[j2buttonsw]

I don't see the problem with asking these types of questions: aking someone on a Q+A site is a form of research. I'm sure I would have done it had we had the internet when I was at school/college. It seems like a good way of getting a link to a relevant site or getting a rough idea of the answer. The bottom line is that if you don't want to answer it or you think it shouldn't be answered then just ignore it.

[LeMarchand]

But it's not the people asking for guidance that are annoying - it's the ones who ask 10 questions expecting essay length answers, and who push legitimate queries off the page.

[enigma]

As far as I am aware , this site is open to anyone to use and as much as at times it can be a bit irritating to see repetition of questions such as the tasty , tasty cereal question and the tuck your blanks into your blanks , there is an easy way to deal with it - skip past it. No-one forces you to read the question or even feel obliged to answer it. Surely we're all here to help each other - isn't that the point of the site , to help others with knowledge of trivia and post your own questions ? Doing a search will not help you much if you don't know the correct spelling of a particular word for example , so surely the point to remember here is that we should be more tolerant of others and realise that if someone has a limited knowledge of what they are researching , then they may not immediately associate certain links with the said topic. Others may just want to hear the opinions of others and how do you know that they haven't already tried looking for the information which they want and posted the question on Answerbank as a last resort ? Let's not be so quick to judge.

[bernardo]

the square root of the number of people asking about tucking blanks into blanks, or 8537, whichever is more.

[LeMarchand]

I hear what you are saying, enigma, but when you type in a question, a list of similar questions pops up - I'm sure that "tasty, tasty" and "tuck your blanks" would reveal that the question had already been asked. I checked for "The Notebook" when that got a lot of queries, and sure enough, the list of previous queries appeared.
Similarly, I find it very hard to believe that the multiple Eng Lit questions on here at the moment are the result of inability to find information. Especially as they seem to be exact transcriptions of essay questions.
Like I said a couple of answers above, they are pushing more legitimate questions off the page. Mind you, they are also pushing some of the inane Harry Potter stuff off the page too, so every cloud has its silver lining...

[woofgang]

Thank you for your opinions. First of all let me come clean and admit that I was in grumpy old woman mode when I posted. BUT I think that I do have a point. I do not believe that the people who come on to this site and post what is obvviously their home work assignment un paraphrased have done any other research or given the matter any thought at all before posting here. We do get questions from other people about their school or college work, but it is evident from the phrasing that the person is puzzled by a point or stuck on something and is not expecting anyone elso to do all the work for them. IMHO education about anything is only marginally about assimilating facts and "received wisdom" and principlally about teching people to find out things for themselves, to think things through, to formulate their own opinions, to validate them by research, to state them clearly and with courtesy, to support them from research and finally to re evaluate them in light of new knowledge ie to THINK. This is important because thinkers make good plumbers and nurses, but more importantly, they make good parents and citizens and that is why we shouldn't just ignore the people who come here looking for easy answers to course work, we should be vigorously encouraging them to get off their ***** and THINK FOR THEMSELVES Rant over, I'll go and take my tablets now...

[woofgang]

sorry about the typos, I got a little exited there but I don't think that anyone will notice ;-)

[woofgang]

...and I meant of course excited