Instant Gratification through Unanswered Posts

Monday May 19th, 2008 (permalink)

I’ve been a member of Rails Forum for over a year now, since January 2007 to be exact. In my first year and 3 months I managed to make about 90 posts. Looking back these are mostly “newb” questions and solicitations for getting on the right track. This was when I was casually using rails and getting up to speed. In the last two weeks I’ve made about 40 posts, 95% of which have been answering the same type of questions that I was asking last year. This type of reciprocal system is a great way to learn and instant gratification.

Unanswered Posts

Most forums have an unanswered posts link that show you all of the posts where no-one has yet replied (duh). I’ve found this to be a great way to become a “first responder” to a lot of problems. Not only do I get a shot at answering a question in my own way, without being biased or lead by other member’s answers, but I get some satisfaction from seeing a list of recently answered posts all with my name on them.

Teaching as a Learning Tool

Personally I’ve always found that teaching or explaining something to someone is a great way to improve my personal understanding of that particular topic. This has been an important part of improving my knowledge of the “why” in all of this. It’s easy to reply to a person and give them the answer, but providing the “why” component, or having to go look it up and then provide it, make a huge difference in furthering my whatever fu.