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Back in the good old days when we distributed our (expensive, leased with a maintenance agreement) software on floppy disks (it was taking up to 12 disks before we switched to the new-fangled CDs) we used to buy disks from a well known brand name and only occasionally got a failure ...which resulted in us having to send out a replacement set by expensive overnight mailing or personal delivery for more local clients. We got through a lot of disks as we patched and updated our software about every three months on average.
Our company accountant was shocked by the cost of these disks and decided to order us some no-name brand in bulk (she ordered five years supply at one go), cutting the cost by half. The incidence of failure went from 1 in 400 to 75 in 400 which meant that we basically had to send two copies of each disk set to make sure the client got one usable set - and then we still had to overnight replacement disks like crazy because of the high failure rate. The overall cost of the floppies tripled since the five-year supply was mostly used up in a single quarterly update! The mailing costs were huge, plus we had to spend the extra time duplicating the disks and were considering having to buy another duplicator and hiring an intern just to keep up. Instead, we took the remaining no-name disks and stored them in the accountants office, on the end of her desk, as a reminder - and went back to our usual supplier.
The whole "cost-saving" decision costs us thousands of dollars in wasted disks, wasted time, wasted mailings and untold costs in reputation as out clients were pi**ed off at their wasted time and the hassle and delays.
Anyone want to buy some floppy disks (no guarantee of actual function)?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
modified 14-Nov-14 10:47am.
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Forogar wrote: The whole "cost-saving" decision costs us thousands of dollars
... And gave her more work, as more beans had to be moved around!
Mission accomplished!
Anyway, can't stop to chat. Gotta create two more bugs to fix later, before I quit for the day.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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chriselst wrote: we've delivered a barely adequate solution that someone needs to hand crank on an almost daily basis.
Welcome to dollar-store software development, whre quantity is more important than quality.
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Going through this with one of my long-time clients. Worked with them for over 5 years, and they finally approached me to give a quote on replacing their existing back-end system.
After delivering the quote, they basically said they couldn't afford that. Period. What were they thinking? Then they tried to "sneak in" bits and pieces of the quote under the service-level agreement as "bug fixes"...
What gets me the most is that they didn't even try to negotiate on any part of the quote. I am sure we could have hammered things out, staged out the delivery over a few years.
At the same time they had some small projects done by co-op students from the local technical institute, and they are totally what you would expect from students. Yet I have probably spent more time getting these projects integrated into their systems and fixing the myriad of bugs in each of them, than it would have taken me just to write these again from scratch.
Such is the life of a contract developer/consultant... 
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I think this vest I bought in an army surplus store is bullet proof - why don't you shoot me so we can find out![^]
=========================================================
I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
=========================================================
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What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
---
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
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Stupidity on both parts.
Dave.
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As a result of recent discussions on how QA should be handled, Members avoid reporting questions there. I observe QA closely after that and felt, quality of Questions is going down rapidly. Thought was to be lenient to OP if he is new to this site,first time poster etc.
Now the situation is, posts are not getting reported (Intension is, once the question is closed OP will feel that there was something wrong with the question and he should improve it. He has option to post another,better question).
I see a horrible QA in upcoming days if this continues. It is ok to advice OP on how to post a good question,but if we will start answering meaning less questions than there won't be need of 'Red Flag' at all and OP will never try anything because he knows some or the other way there is someone who will do something for him.Further,he will never learn how to get help. I can see many questions are not at all according to CP guidelines.
e.g. difference betwwen store procedure and function[^]. OP is new to CP, should we ignore this post? Is it according to CP guidelines?
So, what should be done in order to overcome this issue.
1) Close QA completely?
2) Ignore such questions?
3) Report question and forget about it?
4) Any other suggestions which can really improve its quality.
Let's have some fruitful debate here.
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly"- SoMad
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show a "nag" screen for verification?
==========================================================
Do you think this post is according to the QA guidelines?
[repeat these guidelines here]
[Yes, post it] [Oops, I'll correct before posting]
==========================================================
The nag screen disappears when you have a certain reputation on the site.
Just a thought.
On another note, what annoys me often is when you give someone a comment (not an answer) and ask them to improve the question, they will never do this, but rather reply to the comment itself.
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Based on your current personal interpretation of the "reality" in QA, you see a crisis; obviously, this disturbs you, or you wouldn't be choosing to post this on the Lounge. Is the Lounge really the appropriate place on CP for this type of post ?
I am more concerned about your happiness than I am concerned about QA: you are a highly valued contributor to CodeProject, as your fine reputation clearly shows.
«At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is
...
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance»
T.S. Elliot, The Four Quartets: "Burnt Norton"/xml>
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BillWoodruff wrote: Is the Lounge really the appropriate place on CP for this type of post ?
Why not? Should i move this to some another place? Any recommendation?
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly"- SoMad
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When you post a question on a certain other technical forum, you are prompted with ways in which you can find the answer before you post e.g. Have you tried x, Have you tried y. You are also prompted with similar questions as you type in your own question (presumably it picks up on keywords and makes suggestions as you type).
If we can provide as much help before they post their question then hopefully this should prevent such questions from being posted in the first place.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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If you are referring to StackOverFlow: yes, they do a nice job of pre-post suggestions/guidance: but, SO, usually, is much less newbie-friendly, or vague-question tolerant, than CP QA usually is.
I share your belief that there are some valuable pre-post things CP could do, but I have already suggested them multiple times over the last several years, and see no point suggesting them again.
«At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is
...
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance»
T.S. Elliot, The Four Quartets: "Burnt Norton"/xml>
modified 14-Nov-14 9:12am.
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Anything that adds value to the site is worth considering. And preventing the problem from arising in the first place has to be the better way forward than trying to fix it afterwards.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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Far too early to tell - the discussions only started last week! 
Bear in mind that the "stupidity" of the questions does tend to vary with time anyway, as a new course starts and people start to panic. Give it a couple of months so we have some "real" data to work with, and see if the posters start to learn from the experience!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: the discussions only started last week
I believe we've been having discussions about QA issues as mentioned here for several years.
«At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is
...
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance»
T.S. Elliot, The Four Quartets: "Burnt Norton"/xml>
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Yes, but this time the Hamsters do seem to be listening...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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So...I go to have a look at the question you reference, and...it's been closed by you and He Who Must Not Be Named.
So you "avoided reporting questions" by reporting it as not a question?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: So you "avoided reporting questions" by reporting it as not a question?
No. I meant to say, previously it was getting reported by many members (Closed if views are around 8-10,now it takes 30-50 views). This question was closed (Lets ignore it for a while),but there are too many still open. I am talking about how to approach such questions so that we can have atleast Bearable QA..
OriginalGriff wrote: He Who Must Not Be Named.
..Why? 
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly"- SoMad
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No, you are saying in your original post that the quality of questions has gone down because people aren't reporting them any more: and yet you clearly are still reporting them, and so is You Know Who. And as a result, they are still getting closed - which negates the point of your original comment!
That was a question - at least for the poster - and deserved a reply if only to explain that he shouldn't be using us as a search resource. It's entirely possible that he has tried to Google but doesn't understand what he found and needs help to work it out. Just arbitrarily going "that isn't a question" doesn't help anyone because it closes off all avenues for conversation about why he doesn't understand!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I don't know why people feel such messages (my original post) Spam/Abusive.
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly"- SoMad
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No idea - certainly I didn't tag it as such.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Well, I'm a people (theoretically), and I don't feel your post here was spam, or abusive !
cheers, Bill
«At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is
...
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance»
T.S. Elliot, The Four Quartets: "Burnt Norton"/xml>
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I couldn't have put it better myself.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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My personal approach is
If the OP hasn't made much of an effort and I like the topic / learning the topic I will then point them towards the relevant documentation.
If the OP has made an effort I will also point them towards the documentation and provide an answer with the potential of a code example.
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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