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Elo comments on Require contributions in advance - Less Wrong Discussion

53 Post author: Viliam 08 February 2016 12:55PM

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Comment author: Elo 10 February 2016 03:57:34AM *  13 points [-]

not mentioned: Counter-perspective example.

Example 1:
V1:
"My computer broke, plz help"
V2:
"I was running Ubuntu version XXX, and some large graphing software, for some reason my computer crashed with an error (error number XXX "description"), I thought it was Y, so I tried J, K, L, so I ruled out Y, and also Z as the cause. I have been at this for 5 hours right now, do you know the system? Can you suggest tests that I have not tried yet?"

Example 2:
V1:
"teach me spanish"
V2:
"I want to learn Spanish but I don't know how, can you tell me the first few steps on how to get started then I can come back after that's done and ask you more questions?"

Explanation: If you want someone to help you; offer your contributions when you do it.

Comment author: Viliam 10 February 2016 08:47:18AM 2 points [-]

Yes, that's the complementary part. So the full story -- for both players -- is:

A: If you ask someone to help you, offer your contributions.

B: If someone asks you to help, without offering contributions, ask for them explicitly.

B: If you won't get contributions even upon request, feel free to ignore the issue.