BIG Idea for Kirupa Upgrade

1

Ok, I’ve been using this site for about 4 weeks now, and so far, only 2 of the 6 or so questions I’ve posted have been answered, albeit wrong or 1 week later (which doesn’t doesn’t help when you need an immediate answer). It’s been quite frustrating to say the least!

After posting the same questions on other Flash help forums, I’ve since discovered that this is the norm across the majority of, if not all FREE Flash help sites. Ie: A million questions posted, and most of which go unanswered.

THE BIG IDEA:

So I was thinking, wouldn’t it be a “nique” market for a site where you could post your Flash questions in a standard forum and pay money (via credits) to get correct and immediate answers…And why not upgrade an already trusted and well used site, such as this one, to a model that operates like this?

Similar to sites such as istockphoto.com, users could have the option of purchasing “credits” via credit or debit card, then use these credits to post and get immediate answers/solutions for questions from knowledgeable, yet remote “moderators”.

To ensure timely and correct solutions/responses, moderators would be paid on a commission structure broken down into 2 main categories:

1: Time taken to respond (The quicker the response, the more commission paid. Broken down into an hourly Pro-Rata structure).

…and…

2. Problem solved effectively (This would obviously require post-solution user imput by means of a “yes” or “no” checkbox. They could even be reminded to do this on every log-in if they didn’t do it immediately after solution tested).

[COLOR=Black]I don’t know about anybody else, but I would happily pay a small fee to get immediate and correct answers on questions posted in these forums. And not that text equals alot of data, but it just seems a pointless waste of hosting space and money when you consider the amount of questions not being answered here.

I’m sure theres other sites like this out there, but none that relate exclusively to Flash…correct me if I’m wrong and please post links.

So who else is with me here?..Sound like a good idea or not? :be:[/COLOR]
**
Dallas.**

2

If it takes a week to answer a flash question it’s

a) it’s a boring one, search for it in previous threads
b) it’s too difficult to answer, you should look by hand and hire a flash expert (yes, if you look around the forums you should know them)

Personally I think the answer-to-response ratio is great.

3

nah

it’ll make people into reply whores and make the already increasing rigidity of these forums even worse.

4

Yeah, i don’t like it at all, the people who are just starting up, or are casual flash users will be ignored. I think that would be terrible

5

[quote=mlk;2356099]If it takes a week to answer a flash question it’s

a) it’s a boring one, search for it in previous threads
b) it’s too difficult to answer, you should look by hand and hire a flash expert (yes, if you look around the forums you should know them)
[/quote]

You missed:
c) the people most likely to answer the questions are busy solving their own problems/on holiday/unable to decipher the incomprehensible gibberish masquerading as a question.

If you feel an urge to pay someone to get your “immediate” answer because you’re unable to meet your deadlines, then make a request in the job offers forum. Alternatively, there are sites out there that have specific Flash/actionscript sections that operate exactly like the business model you’ve described; ExpertsExchange being perhaps the best known.

Yes, it can be frustrating if you can’t get answers - but you should also consider it from the answerer’s point of view:

  1. The lack of response/thanks when an answer is submitted makes them think twice about answering any questions.
  2. People who post a question, that they apparently want answered yesterday, and then immediately going offline makes one wonder just how urgent it really is.
  3. Being told that the solution is wrong or doesn’t work; even though it answers the question as posed, and after spending some time developing an example FLA/writing out the code for them.
  4. Answering a simple question but then subsequently having to explain basic principles (what is a movieclip, how to create a layer, where does the actionscript go) because the questioner hasn’t even bothered to learn Flash.

There are a host of reasons why people answer questions…they do it because it inflates their ego/they’re curious themselves about the problem/they have ten minutes to spare/they’re working on something similar/they’re just naturally helpful/they asked the same question a month ago/it gives them a warm cuddly feeling inside. Financial recompense is rarely one of them.

6

Well, you have to remember this forum is NOT a help desk. It’s mostly hobbyists. We are by no means required to help or support anyone.

Also the people who are requesting that their posts get answered heavily outweigh the amount of people who can answer. So it can be overbearing for the folks who would answer cause it starts to seem like a job (i know cause I used to answer flash questions, but stopped cause i would always get spammed for help). Also, when you say you don’t expect to get an answer in your post … 9 times outta 10, you won’t. Or when in your previous posts you ridicule the site, you can’t expect that people will help you out in your next ones.

If you want to pay someone for the answer, or better yet the fixed .fla you can post it in the job section under low profile or something of that nature.

7

Wow.

Go to Flashkit bud. There are lots of friendly faces over there. :wink:

8

I think glosrfc and simplistik summed it up beautifully already. This place always has been and still is run by people willing to spend their precious time and effort into helping others; nobody here has any obligation whatsoever to help anyone, the only reason they do is because they’re nice people. I’d very much like to keep it that way.

9

[QUOTE=DC_Creative;2356094]only 2 of the 6 or so questions I’ve posted have been answered, albeit wrong or 1 week later (which doesn’t doesn’t help when you need an immediate answer). [/QUOTE]

hello sense of entitlement.

10

why is he whining and why does he want to pay to get help?
get a flash teacher or something…

11

There’s a job/freelance section too - if you’re willing to pay someone to answer a question, post the offer there. No one OWES anyone a ■■■■ thing, except perhaps owing Kirupa a great deal of thanks for having this site in the first place.

12

Wow Fester, have you been to Flashkit lately? It’s enough to send an epileptic into a fatal seizure. Theres so much s**t going on in that site I find it hard to remember what I went there for in the 1st place for. Thats why I chose this site. For it’s light, minimal layout…Smartass!

And from MLK:

Personally I think the answer-to-response ratio is great.

I’ll have what your on thanks. Sounds like some good gear! Are you serious?? Have you had a look at the View to Response ratios lately?? Lol. You’ve gotta be joking mate!

a) it’s a boring one, search for it in previous threads

1. Most other questions in query related threads I manage to locate haven’t been answered either…and not just because they’re “too hard”.

2. Everytime I’ve located a query related Kirupa archive thread link through a Google search, it takes me to the page, then expects me to search through 100 different threads to find the post it located for me in the first place…which makes it very easy to get side-tracked. Oh, and I might also add that when or if I do eventually locate the thread I was looking for…yep, you guessed it. The question was never answered to begin with. What a surprise.

Well, you have to remember this forum is NOT a help desk. It’s mostly hobbyists. We are by no means required to help or support anyone.

…Ok, I understand that, but if you’d read my full post…Hmmm.

it’ll make people into reply whores

…I’d prefer reply “whores” over reply, umm, “make you wait a monthers” anyday.

Look, I’ve found some of the tutorials on this site great and really helpful, but the Forums leave alot to be desired. And just for the record (and feel free to follow my example), I’ve already helped someone with their “Transitions” question only a week after learning how to do it myself (Thanks to a great Kirupa tutorial!). And yes it gave me a

warm cuddly feeling inside

. What can I say, I enjoy helping people. I just wish there were more people on this site who did too. :wink:

Regards,
Dallas.

13

[QUOTE=Jasninder;2356169]why is he whining and why does he want to pay to get help?
get a flash teacher or something…[/QUOTE]
he’s not whining, the posed a possible solution to a legitimate problem. the people who want help want help now, which is understandable. but those same people need to understand that we get an absurd amount of help wanted posts a day, and it’s not a requirement to help everyone all the time.

14

It’s cool. I checked out Experts Exchange as glosrfc suggested…and I’m gonna sign-up…as soon as I have money on my Credit-Card again! Lol.

15

Hmmm people get helped on this forum everyday, just cause you didn’t doesn’t mean anything. Check out server-side or client-side. Also the reason that the views to replies ratio is high is cause your views add up and so do just random arse people who happen to click the thread. Views means nothing. The ratio YOU need to look at is the people that are able to help vs the people that need help, you can see that those of us who can help are heavily outweighed by those who need help. And the last i checked again… this is none of our jobs. Answering everyone is retardedly time consuming.

16

To be honest it is a lot more of a problem on the smaller sections of the forums. I noticed your threads were in the MX2004 (and older) section. I certainly never step foot in there, and i would imagine it would be better for you to ask in the AS2 or AS3 sections as they seem the busiest. Certainly in the AS3 section it is rare for a question to go unanswered, although i’ve had it happen to me a few times and i agree it is disheartening. I think my reason was that the questions were really quite specific and about the nitty gritty of certain flex components. Posting them here was a long shot in the first place.

Actually looking at the sections now, it does seem to be a problem in all of the sections apart from the AS3 one.

17

I try to help people as fast as I can, but I am not yet knowledgeable enough to answer most questions. On top of that, I often don’t even get a chance to check the questions forums more than once or twice a day for a few minutes.

EDIT: @Iamjuggler: Yet another reason I need to find the money for CS3, AS2 questions aren’t answered near as fast.

18

I agree with simp and add you need to also look at time differences as well.

Personally I have a tough time cleaning up the forums to find time with my ‘real’ work to help as much as I use to. Most of my help comes from the design side of this forum and I do what I can to answer questions I know the answer to. From when i remeber most of the awesome coders that would help have left the site, leaving a very minimal amount of awesome coders to help a ever increasing amount of questions as simp said. A actual ‘pay 4 help’ concept is not a bad idea but it’s not for these forums.

19

I’m not sure that firing every question into the AS3 forum actually helps. A lot of us don’t have AS3 so the only answers I can provide in there are general ones relating to the Flash IDE, or where they’re specifically about AS1/2 and which should really be in that forum.

20

I think a lot of the time it depends on how the question is written. Sometimes people need an answer immediately, and they fire off a question without even reading it back to make sure it makes sense. This makes it difficult for anyone trying to help!

Personally, I’ve always found people here very helpful, and likewise, if I can help with a question, I’ll give an answer.