CorelDRAW Community versus Adobe Illustrator Community

 Any poor fool who blunders in with a question, legitimate or not, is crucified for the entertainment of the assembled sophomores. If you post 'incorrectly' a dozen people will chime in and tell you how stupid you are.  If you post correctly few people will help you. Everyone will point you to a FAQ regardless of whether the answer lies within or not.

The few times I have posted, correctly, with full information, I have received no answers. Eventually, I find them on my own or discover them for myself. I always go back and post a never mind, solved message. Then I get emails from timid people afraid to post, begging me for the solution.

God-forbid you post from a NNTP group software. You better be using the web interface or else you will be chastised for not reading the FAQ pinned to the top or doing the web search for the answer first.

Typical Adobe Newsgroup responses:

"This has already been answered"

"Turn off your autoquotes"

"Empty Response"

Thank you Rick,

It seems you are the only member in corelDRAW.com who participates in Adobe forums. Thanks again for sharing your experience :)

If I ever come across a positive word better than shoot or expose…, I'll let you know.

wrote in message news:37516@coreldraw.com...
> Thank you Rick,
>
> It seems you are the only member in corelDRAW.com who participates in
> Adobe forums. Thanks again for sharing your experience :)
>
> If I ever come across a positive word better than shoot or expose…,
> I'll let you know.

I'm over in the DW newsgroups about everyday.

I don't think that newsgroup is as vitriolic as Rikk says the PS or AI
newsgroups are ... however, yes, most of the newsgroups (for any software
out there) do have little patience for laziness and/or "stupidity."

I need to qualify things here. "Ignorance" is not the same as "stupidity."
Everyone, including myself, is ignorant in various subjects to a certain
degree - it's just a fact. No one can know everything in every subject. I
don't think anyone in the newsgroups for any software app looks down on
anyone for ignorance - I mean, how could you know about something you've had
no exposure to in the past? But the "stupidity/laziness" factor is when
people come into the newsgroups/forums and *demand* everyone do everything
for them because how dare anyone suggest they actually read a manual or a
help file or even try to troubleshoot something themselves.

Best bet for any newsgroup/forum? when posting a plea for help, etc, always
make sure your subject line is relevant - i.e., a subject line of "problem"
or "i need help", etc, is pretty useless because many people who could help
out would see potential drama in dealing with that question because if the
person can't be bothered to put relevant info in the subject line, odds-are
the actual body of the message doesn't have any helpful info in it... and no
one wants to have to play 20 questions just to find out all the details of
what's actually going on so they can help troubleshoot.

Also, make sure in the body of the message you state things like what app
and version you're using. I see people say, "I'm using Corel" and expect
everyone to be a mind-reader. "Corel" is a company, not a product. Likewise,
the same thing goes for "X4, Adobe, CS2, CS3, CS3, X3, etc" X4 is a version
number, sure... but for what app? Draw? WordPerfect? Photopaint? CS3...
Illustrator? Dreamweaver? InDesign? Fireworks? Photoshop? Contribute? I
think you get the picture.

State the exact error message you may be getting. Show a screenshot of the
error if that's easier. State the steps taken that cause the error. If
possible, put a link online to the problem file or if it's a web issue give
a URL to the site, etc.

Generally people want to help out in all these newsgroups/forums... but
remember that whether it's Corel or Adobe or another graphics company, these
are user-to-user newsgroups/forums. None of us here are reps for the
company, and we all have our own jobs/lives we need to pay attention to.
Don't get upset if someone doesn't post a solution in 5 minutes. Some people
may not visit more than once a day or even once a week.

Just use common sense and help the people trying to help you out (and I'm
not speaking about any one person in particular here - I'm meaning a
"generic" or group "you") and things should be OK.