Questions without answers

[Super user]

I would like to air one gripe that has been steadily building as I have
been reading various posts on the question/advice oriented newsgroups.
I have been running a public-access bbs under MSDOS for a large number
of years now (for bbs standards large anyway), and it's also something
I have been fighting on there.

The trend is to ask a question, and then to finish it by saying "Please
reply to E-mail/private mail as I am too busy to keep up with this
conference/newsgroup."

What's the result? Well, the result is a newsgroup in which you have lots
and lots of questions, and no answers. The result is also that people
stop reading the newsgroup, as nobody is really terribly interested in
the questions. It's the answers and the advice people are reading it for.

I find that often I have the answers to questions I read, but when I
see the above request for private replies, I don't bother to reply to
the question, private or public. Public because the person who asked the
question already said he wouldn't be reading it, and private because I
don't want to encourge such rather selfish attitudes.

Think about it, ok? If you really want the question answered, the least
you could do is to take the time to read the answer. Besides, if you
read the newsgroup regularly, maybe you might learn something :-).

Comments and Feedback encouraged, publicly to this newsgroup.