Your policy on PMs?

[GregFreeman]

I got this today...just curious what people's policies are on PM's. Should I respond, answer, redirect to the forums,etc? 

"Hi,

I read on forum that you know very well web services.
I study this post http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/How-do-I-get-continuous-data-acquisition-using-web-services/td-p/215... , but I don't understand it.

I have a problem.
I'm trying to create a web server to visualize data acquired by DAQ (continuous samples).
I'm able to visualize the xml if I use N-samples, but when I try to insert a loop nothing works.

I send you block panel, front panel and the interface created with web UI builder (but I don't know how to connect it because web service doesn't work )

http://tinypic.com/r/2z9jo9k/6

http://tinypic.com/r/34rj62b/6

http://tinypic.com/r/258bg44/6

I hope that you can help me, because I need to finish this project early... I have to graduate in december, so I need to finish project and write the report.

Thank you so much and sorry for my english,

Veronica"

[crossrulz]

I got the exact same PM.  I know its someone looking for help with school.  I don't know if they just asked on the forum.  That would have been better for them.

I simply just deleted it.

[JÞB]

I usually politely invite the poster to start a public thread where they may recieve the full benifits of the community's collective knowledge and where others may also learn from their struggles. Then I watch their profile for a few days.   

[altenbach]

My profile page has the following text:

"PMs are only OK for messages of personal nature. If you have a LabVIEW problem, post it in the forum".

Many times I simply ignore PMs that violate that rule.

[PaulG.]

I delete and don't respond. My time is too valuable. Besides, if it's posted on the forum they will probably get a better answer than they would from me. 

[tst]

If you want to be helpful (I'm not saying "not rude", because they're the rude ones, especially if they send the same PM to several people, so I don't think ignoring them would be rude) without spending a lot of time on this, you could create a macro and use that to reply with two clicks. Here's one I just created from a previous reply:

Title: Search for it yourself

Text:

You should not send people private messages for this. It is considered impolite and wastes people's time.
 
First search the forums and other places to see if you can find existing information. If you can't, then you can post a question to the LabVIEW board.

[Ray.R]

Depending on the subject and the body text, I may delete it or reply that they should post in the forum.

[pallen]

If the message came from someone I 'knew' from the forums, then I'd either answer or re-direct. 

But if it's from someone I don't know that hasn't even asked the question in the forum I'd probably just delete it.  My guess is that any response from you that isn't the exact answer to the poster's problem would also be deleted out of hand. 

If this poster is spamming all kinds of people with requests like this, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to report it to the mods. 

[Ray.R]

There's no way to know it's a spam unless it is brought out in the open like within this thread.

[JackDunaway]

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@for(imstuck) wrote:

I got this today...just curious what people's policies are on PM's. Should I respond, answer, redirect to the forums,etc? 

---

Short answer: It's good to respond and be nice, redirecting to the forums.

Spoiler

Longer answer: Many of us regulars on these forums pay the bills by professionally developing in LabVIEW -- one of the best ways to increase your own marketability and career path is by helping increase LabVIEW adoption -- being nice is one easy way to keep newcomers on the hook and plugged into the community (this is ostensibly the most selfish reason for being nice, yet it's still legit!). Many (most?) homework-hunters will be leeches, but let their continued interactions earn this title rather than their first interaction. (Ashamedly, I've ignored many PM's like this over the past year "because I've been too busy" -- not a good excuse to ignore people) I've read (anecdotally) that 80-90% of a given forum's participants are lurkers -- let's show that the LV community is a great place to participate, and reap the benefits and rewards of converting lurkers into active participants 🙂 Finally, being afraid of "diluting the forum" with basic, boring questions is not a human problem; this is a technology problem. It's completely technically feasible to have a massive community that promotes all levels of technical interaction (StackExchange has masterfully executed this), and I'm confident that NI, Lithium, and Jive are working toward this goal technically -- so let's help them in every way possible to build the LabVIEW community 🙂