Why you don't share your Knowledge?

The reason I am starting this topic comes from the the 3 weeks work for the pub Max phisics mod : http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=52760

It maybe writes 2 weeks the time I write this but before this post were 1 week of work in another post.

I cannot understand why people in this forum are not sharing knowledge. I have seen posts from people showing there abilities to do stuff and never helping the others whom cannot.

Where is the problem to share your knowledge?

Is it because you paid your teachers?
Is it because you are professional programmers? (And you wand money)
Is it because you don't wand to help?
Is it because you never were helped? (This is a reason to help)
Is it because you don't have free time? (I don't think so.)
Is it because you wand to sell your knowledge?
Or What?

Free time is one of the biggest issue for many people. I wish i had more!.

I have loadza free time, and I wish I could help do the MaxPhysics, but I'm crap a physics & math. If need any help that doesn't envole them then I can do it just tell me whata do :p

EDIT: I just play et when I'm not doing anything. Or THINK about doing my other projects. And read Discworld books.

I don't think building a physics engine is a project well suited to a community project, so never looked at the thread.

The word 'physics' is very scary to some people. I'm guessing that there are only a few people on these forums that could contribute to it usefully. That's because physics and maths ARE scary to some people, like me. :P

..I like to share everything except womans, and cars :))

.

I dont mind sharing my info, but for large secretive things, you'd have to email to ask- since i dont like the idea of someone who just scans the website and doesnt even necesarily own blitz, finding my methods.

I will share info with anyone here who requires it if they just email me. :)

also best not to share you car with your woman, if you want it back in one piece ;-) joke, don't get "anti-sexist" on my arse please.

you sexist bast*rd





...:P sorry, you asked for it, then you asked for it even more!!!! :D

Haramani, quite frankly, after reading your initial post I feel ashamed; ashamed of myself for hoarding my knowledge. But no longer! Enjoy!

In John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, the character of Satan could be said to be the hero. He certainly fulfills most if not all of the criteria necessary to be classified as a traditional epic hero (as seen, for example, in Homer's Odyssey and Iliad). Of course, some critics would disagree with this. C.S. Lewis, in his essay A Prelude to Paradise Lost says that if one must identify a hero in Paradise Lost then that it should be the Son of God and not Satan. Milton's use of Satan is not the only way in which he both adopts and alters the conventions of epic poetry either. If we can define Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost then, perhaps, we can also define Milton's God as the villain. Of course this depends on how we define the word "villain" - As someone who acts in a villainous way for the greater good, or someone who - regardless of their actions - has villainous intentions.


Never let it be said that I am unwilling to share my knowledge. If you want to know more about the traditional conventions of epic poetry, just ask. I'm also happy to talk about Pastoral Poetry, Metaphysical Poetry, or the differences between the Shakespearian, Petrarchan, and Spencerian sonnet. At a stretch I can also talk about scansion - but I grow a bit hazy with anything more difficult than Iambs, Trokees and Dactyls.

.

JustLuke has hit the nail bang on the head :D

.

Justluke: Do you regard that as a valuable lifeskill as well as knowledge?

It depends on what knowledge I'm being asked to share.

Grey Alien, actually it's dangerous knowledge that only the courageous few dare possess. Milton? Dead. Shakespeare? Dead. Petrarch? Dead. Spencer? Dead. They just couldn't handle it. But who's alive now? Me baby! So, yes, just surviving the knowledge could be said to be a valuable lifeskill.

i agree with Noodle Cower.

If someone were to ask me to share my knowledge of Shakespearian rhyme scheme then I would, of course, say "ABABCDCDEFEFGG" and if someone were to ask me to teach them the Petrarchan rhyme scheme then I would undoubtably respond "ABBAABBACDECDE". But if someone asked me how Russian Formalism differs from American New Criticism then I would say "that's none of your D**N business!" But wouldn't we all?

Paid your teachers?
Definately not. None of the teachers I had could teach me more than I already knew.

Profesional Programmers?
Don't consider myself as one. I do have 22 years of experience, but I think there's more than just experience to become "profesional"

Don't want to help?
Oh, I do WANT! Still most questions I see I can answer are already answered when i get on the question boards. Pity...


Never were helped?
I think I've always got all the help I needed.
But if I ever get more cash I *am* considering starting up a few services the internet really lacks. Problem is, that it's not likely I'll ever be able to cough up the money that is required for that.

No free time?
YAAAAWN!
Huh, what did you say... I was busy being bored.

you want to sell your knowledge?
Who would want to buy *my* knowledge?

What knowledge is not being shared? With regards to the physics engine, i doubt many people, including me (especially me) would understand. Share the end product i say! GIVE ME YOUR CODEZ!

YEAH!!

GIMME DA CODEZ!

well I use to try and share my knowledge but you will find people complain more about it then praising you for it. Then theirs the "write my game for me" type people so its really hard to offer any knowledge out because someone either wants everything for free or wants to bend you over backwards and steal everything.

Maybe somebody has failed to notice those big fat code archives and reams of topics where people help each other, denoting this as one of the more philanthropic haunts on the 'net?

ok... this was a fun read... next absolutely crucial topic!!!


:)


--Mike

I have to agree with Haramanai to some degree. While it's true that it sucks to "throw pearls to the pigs" and I also don't support the "write me an uber game" species, I also miss some sharing of knowledge from time to time.

I remember one Guitarplayer, as soon as he thought some other guitarplayers in the audience are trying to analyze his riffs etc. he turned his back against the crowd. That was so stupid. But after all it seems those guys soon turn around in circles and don't become any better anymore.

My philosophy is: if you share your knowledge then other people will help you carry it and allow you climb up higher.

Hey, I'm quite happy to share what I know - you just have to ask the right questions!

(And yes, release dates etc lie well outside 'what I know')....

Most of the time, I only have concepts and idea, which are never developed further, but some times I make a POC and publish it. However, from the 2 codearchive entries I have made, it seems they have only limited appeal, and since I am not able to develop them further, they are propably going to remain very poor.

I did try making the Fake mirrors entry into a community project, but people didn't wish to participate. That's how things are in this world, people have a free will and choose to work on something or not.

I don't know if I am going to release any of my other work, but the fact that I am not a very good programmer and the community is not geared to develop ideas makes me think not. There's really no point.


Andy

I'm very open about method and techniques and I have even given away quite a lot of code.

Quite a lot I get asked to share my prized works (the water in WaterWorld, the terrain in my procedural Dragonrage engine) and it's always hard to share the latest and newest thing - it's "my" work let "me" exploit it first... I get asked for the code, not help in making a simular (but different) system, and that makes it a harder pill to swallow.

I'm quite happy to explain how i've done stuff, i'm quite happy to explain methods, but I rarely give code out because people start chopping it, changing it, and asking questions about their integration problems that take hours for me to sort out - or they make no changes at all and expect it to just work in their program, when the visual scale is wrong or it's placed above the camera because they coded it differently to me - in which case explaining the bug to them also involves teaching them the basics of programming, which is too tiresome.

Also if I just give code out you havn't learned anything. I'd rather teach a few how to do something (albeit only my way!) then give everyone a library that they'll take for granted.

On the ocassions when I do post for help here (4-5 times this year) I make sure I then answer at least half a dozen questions from others to pay for that help. However I mostly do my tutoring (and learning) on closed boards nowadays, I just come to Blitz because there's lots of activity which helps pass away some time and provides a good distraction to break up the day.

i'd be verrrrry happy to share my code techiniques...

... but noone has yet to ask how to make their application run slower and less effectively...

... but when they do, i've got tons of code snippets that'll do just what they want!!!


--Mike

The best players are rarely the best coaches.

Why don't people share knowledge?

Because the mods have driven away all the knoweldgeable users like me who used to hang out on the forums 8 hours a day and chat, and help people while we were at it. Now you can't chat in off topic anymore, so we don't come here half as much, or bother to read half the threads. It's no fun anymore.

Add to that the fact that there are now three distinct Blitz languages, and the discussions have fragmented because most folks don't use Blitzplus, and the rest are half divided between Max and Blitz 3D. IMO, making Max almost wholly incompatable with Blitz 3D was a big mistake.

I don't think many people here are refusing outright to help because they are selfish and want money, or don't think you should get help for free. That's silly. I think it is simply a lack of free time, and getting tired of repeating oneself over and over. I've posted lots of physics threads in the past. Search for them. But if you can't find them, then you can blame the mods for that because they deleted a few years worth of threads several months back. Maybe the threads still exist on the internet wayback machine.

Also, the stuff you were asking about is hard stuff. Stuff I haven't programmed myself, and I'm one of the more knowledgeable users here as far as I can tell. So there might be only 2 or 3 users here who could tell you how to do polygon to polygon collision fast and then rotate the obejct around the collision points with inertia and model spring systems and stuff. Most folks here doing that stuff I think were using some open source physics system that was prone to crashing. So your problem might be that this language isn't designed for folks that program big commercial games for a living, and who need to know that kinda stuff.

I think you've shared to much sswift:P

Me I don't have much knoledge to share, mainly due as I have not used blitz in about 6 months.

Now theirs a few reasons

1. I code mainly web applications as I feel I can do more a develop it into a job easier than I could in game programming due to many pepole needing web applications customed fitted to their needs and it being hard to break into the game industry. And if you did sadly they don't use blitz

2. I have a lot less free time that I used to *Sigh

3. The powers that be on this forum really did kill of many of the reasons to come(which brings me back on topic)I agree with sswift. A lot of pepole came here to enjoy them selves and talk in offtopic and they would then drop of into the other forums and help pepole but as this has being taken away from me, and more importantly the pepole competent enougth to acturraly help some one, this event does not accur and I know one mans rambling is not going to change some any thign but it's the way I see it.

Ok I am going back to my hole

O and I just noticed I basicly echoed sswifts statment but with more rambling and spelling/grammer mistakes.

Still, Cobra will come along and save the day.

my often applied knowledge is:
- explaining B+ to beginners
- explaining to make ye olde map-editor

And for the rest, my methods to create silly solutions are so abnormal in the eyes of many that my knowledge is prolly never on the shoppinglist of most ppl. :P Nonetheless, my solutions are nice solutions.. be it that they're solutions for problems that others don't have, or care about.

For example, have a text in your (B+) app, acting as help or something. What would others do? Create HTML help, display a textfile with some textarea.. run notepad and show text, use any simple way of doing it..

What do I do?
(1) I create a fonteditor which outputs a single string
(2) I create an imagegenerator which reads the string and outputs an image (being a complete font at ascii order)
(3) I create a little scriptlanguage to put a small/medium text in a single string, including indents, enters. The result is a bank with formatted text.
(4) I create a textviewer which needs a textbank and an image.

Probably that textviewer was made with:
(1) an own buttonsystem..
(2) ..using precalced scriptbased-images (my lovely texture-gen)

Naturally all scripts are in the sourcecode, so that I never have to load stuff.. my own weird incbin in B+ so to say :P

So, uhm, is anyone waiting on THIS knowledge? Or should I just continue to play tablesoccer at the "assylum of insane ppl"? :P

Yeah, I could probably help on the physics project, I've thought about it

Thing is I don't use blitz anymore and have plenty to work on in other langauges. Plus I don't really like where the code is going, If i was to help I'd likely feel like rewriting it whenever i worked on it.

Not to rain on your parade or anything, but so is the web applications industry. The problem with the game industry is that the bar is so high, it's hard to compete without serious capital. The problem with web applications is that the bar is so low, anyone can do it.

Which is undoubtedly the biggest obstacle for community projects.

I agree wholeheartly with Sswift.

Before this forum became so strict, I came here all the time and read and posted on the off-topic forum. While I waited for someone to reply to a thread, I visited the other forums and helped out where I could.

Now I usually just come by once a day to see if there's a movement in the general discussion area, post in a thread only to find it deleted an hour later.

It really kills the community, and I think it will be very evident after a while. I don't even consider it a community anymore, just a private forum without anything interesting chatter.

Well, since Ash brought it up again, I agree.

First, I get banned for posting kitten pictures. Some confusion about double-posting was why I was banned specifically, but the point is I was banned for posting kitten pictures.

I get unbanned a day later, not so much as an apology from skidracer for banning me and preventing me access to software I paid for. I figure I'll let it go since the guy is about as stable as a raging alcoholic riding a unicycle.

So, I post my kitten again, this time with Blitz shaved onto it. I figure that because now it's obviously a Blitz-related kitten, she'll get the adoration she deserves -- nope. Deleted.

It is a kitten, skid. What is wrong with you? Are you jealous of my kitten? Do you not like kittens? Are you somehow aroused by kittens and must block them out because of your severe mental issue(s)? If it's the last one, seek help.

Frankly, I've been banned from here before for criticizing BRL's work. You guys ever heard the saying "the customer is always right?" Stop tooling around and get your act together. Everyone is obviously tired of this crap, the forum was a much better place before skid went completely insane. Remember that thread I posted asking to have skid's mod status removed? I think by now it's a very legitimate request.

Him and Shagwana both clearly need to take a step back and look at the consequences of what they're doing. When you delete every interesting thread on the forum, you make the intelligent people go away and leave the useless ones who don't actually contribute worthwhile information but just post stuff to stir the pot, so to speak (case in point: FlameDuck).

And while we're on the subject of the well-being of the forum, bring back off-topic or remove skid's completely inane rules. Go ahead and lock political and religious threads, but locking fun ones about kittens and MegaMan? Come on. Have you completely lost your senses? Do you want to drive off the majority of people who will still buy your stuff? Any reasonable business doesn't, they want to make sure their customers are happy so they'll stay and see future products as worth buying. I haven't bought MaxGUI -- wonder why? It's because it's obvious you aren't going to support your customers the way people like The Game Creators, the PureBasic developers, or Truevision 3D developers (who are very nice folks, by the way -- always able to talk to them about bugs and they're very receptive to feature requests unlike a certain other company) will.

Frankly, I'm not happy at all with what's going on right now. I've behaved very well, as far as I'm concerned, for the past two months, so when I posted kittens I didn't expect to get banned. Why are these foolish forum rules still in place? Why are people like skid and Shagwana allowed to be moderators? Just because skid works for BRL doesn't mean he should be a moderator. As for Shag, with some training he might be better. How come the BlitzMax IDE is actually worse than before? Why is the default website skin still ugly (noticed while I was banned)? Why is a thread about a newly adopted kitten that was abandoned on my doorstep deleted?

Also, I'd take a dig at skid's appearance (saw the picture), but I figure I'll save that for when I'm really ticked off. And for the record, I don't have a problem with Mark anymore, this is primarily about skid and secondarily Shagwana (and a tiny mention for simonh to fix up the default website theme -- you don't sell games, you sell programming languages, so don't make it look unprofessional and gamey to outsiders; take a look at fredborg's theme for an idea as to what professional is) as they are the ones that have caused all the problems as of late (let's say 'late' is the past 6-7 months).

Err... sorry, I'm missing the point of the original question.

Every, and I mean _every_ time I've hit a problem I posted here, and if someone had been there before me then they'd post their code solution.

I shudder to think how many crucial areas of my engine are actually other people's code. Thanks guys.

Or does he want something like this?:-
; Start Program
HL2beater()
; End program
Function HL2beater
; <- please put your code here.
End Function

Seriously, I've been with Blitz3D now for 3 1/2 years (?) and not one problem has remained unsolved thanks to this community, whether it's climbing ladders, collisions, flying my camera around a pre-plotted bezier curve, point & click terrain editing... have I made my point?

This is a brilliant invaluable community. What is this guy's problem?

It sure is, the problem however is that it isn't going to stay that way with these SuperStrict rules in place.

Someone didn't get have his milk and cookies today.

Although, I must agree on the kitten thread. That was rather clever (even though it was photochoped) ;-)

And it was blitz related (in a small fashion)

I think the Blitz Community is okay. However, the forum software is awful, and it really hurts that there's no proper search facility. Deleting old threads is worrying too, as those were the main source of info for dealing with Blitz3D and its quirks.

I love Blitz, and I do try to share as much as I can, but my programming knowledge is limited. However, regardless of my problems with the forums I realise that this is the best option we have.

Dock, in the interest of sharing knowledge <g> (forgive me if you already know this), Google can overcome a couple of forum limitations that you mention.

You can google with site:blitzbasic.com "search phrase here" to get proper phrase searches (and sometimes using site:blitzmax.com will pick up other posts, even if they aren't Max related). And Google's cache is able to show what a old post once contained, even after it's been deleted.

It takes a while for Google to get around to indexing posts, though, so a search won't find very recent ones. And if a post is deleted shortly after being created, it won't ever be indexed (and thus never cached).

At the risk of hi-jacking this thread......what does a kitten has to do with Blitz?

"A" kitten generally doesn't have anything to do with blitz, however, I think that when a Blitz "Community" member posts a picture of his newly rescued kitten - its a matter of community "bonding".
If I can relate to what people are doing in their everyday life, and talk with them on this forum, I will come here more often.

BINGO! The mods have serious control issues and need to get their little hands smacked whenever they reach for the censor button. All of the old guard are filtering away due to the idiotic reactionary moderating. Period.

But back to the thread at hand... Everything I've made for blitz I've given away. The source? No. That's mine and I'm a greedy little bastich. That and I don't want to feel embarrased because it's sloppy poop-code. :)

I share my knowledge and it helps people produce wonderful things : http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=53717

"raging alcoholic riding a unicycle" gee I gotta try that sometime, how 'bout now 'hic, squeek squeek crash .... thud ... ow!

Well, we do have to remember that it is BRL's site, not ours. They will choose to moderate it as they wish. Our opinions on community don't hold much water since we are usually fighting amongst ourselves most of the time.

In fact, I do recall times where Noel was singled out and beat on by other Members in some threads he started. He does get a bit defensive in those situations, but then with this he can turn a double edged sword... (no offense Noel).

I think some people are just not so inclined to be teachers as others are, some are more generous, some have more experience than others, some might understand coding but not have a great ability to step back and see a bigger picture so that they can teach it well, some just don't have the time, some are selfish and focussed on their own projects to the point where they don't want to spend time doing something `for free` or non-project-related, there's all kinds of reasons. I Don't think anyone has any entitlement to be taught by people, just because they might know about a subject. There is as little gratitude in that as there is generosity in the people who don't share it. Also you'll find most people learn by teaching themselves, experimenting, taking the time to learn and make mistakes, taking more and more information in, talking to others, etc. You can't have things handed to you on a silver platter, there'd be no value in you accumulating it. And even when some people do share or teach or tutor stuff there are different degrees of how much effort they put into it - some will share just some program code and expect you to make your way with it, others will explain the subject and give a good summary, etc. You sound like you're angry about or frustrated with or jealous or other people having knowledge that you don't yet have. It's valuable information and people's time is valuable so you aren't likely to find a whole lot of us suddenly turning into blitz-schoolteachers. I think at the root of all this you need to have more patience with yourself and your own learning process, knowing that it is taking time and that you need to put in efforts yourself to educate yourself.