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Why do people help each other in these forums?

Hello all!

I'm a third year Graphic Design student and I'm doing a project on "unsung heroes". And Im really interested in people that volunteer up their personal time to help people via the internet. Which is why Ive posted on this forum. I think its great! You guys are a credit to our society.

So I was hoping that you could answer a few questions to help me out with my research.

What motivates you to create these tutorials?

What feedback do you get from people?

Do you think it makes a difference?

And finally, who's your unsung hero?

Thanks for your time, I appreciate any input you can give.

Best regards

Femi

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Thank you both for your responses!

They are both really insightful!

If anyone else has anymore to add it would be much appreciated.

Thanks again!

F

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For me it all comes down to this. Knowledge is power,so if I posses some knowledge about a certain topic, and I create a guide, or answer a specific question, I share this knowledge. This will enable that particular person to be empowered.To be empowered to accomplish a specific task, provides one with a sense of fulfilment, accomplishment and pride. In other words, it makes you feel good about yourself (bet that works on the dopamine receptors in our brains:-). Now, and this is an important step, if there is no feedback, this feeling will eventually dissipate and participation will decrease. Just like with anything else in this world, it pays to say thank you, or on here, to upvote and/or to accept an answer, shows appreciation. We all have to be in agreement, it is a great feeling to be appreciated. I am convinced it makes a difference, at least to one person. The one that asked the question and got an answer that worked. Or for the person that needed a guide to fix his/her device and found it on here, it sure makes a difference.

My unsung heroes are my colleagues, may it be in my profession as well as my personal life, that try to make a difference in this world. Here is is a little bit more about why I do the things I do :-)

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For your first question, the answer is actually very simple. It's because of the difficulty of finding service material. If I have my camera handy I may make a guide but at the same time, it has to make sense. I have a policy of 2007 and up being considered for guides only, since I consider this reasonable. I don't think it's really worth making a guide for a 2002 Dell, for example. It's going to get little to no use because after 10+ years that thing is going to be treated as eWaste.

Could I do it? Absolutely, and I have before in the past but these days I stick to 2007+ for guides, since these are almost always at least a C2D, which are far more useful today then any Pentium 4.

Back when I wrote this, I was really only taking in small jobs on occasion, and this didn't happen a lot. These days, I can get them with little trouble and if I want an old system because it's going to be eWasted, it's almost always mine even without asking. This is because of my data destruction policies. My policies are HIPAA/privacy law cases get the drive back(this is a liability protection for both parties, and to help them stay in compliance. As soon as the drive leaves the door, it's a breach.), business cases are in multiple classes(they can ask for the drive at any level, too.) and home users have the choice entirely. These policies played a major role in making it easy to get good jobs.

While I am all about keeping old machines out of the landfill, I only really do that with C2D machines these days. I don't think it really makes sense to fix Pentium 4 machines when I can get C2D equipment. I'll fix it if I have a use case that needs it or it's more ideal(i.e. XP machines) but for the most part I will only fix C2D and up, and I will still use 1st gen Core i series machines. They're definitely showing their age, but I can fix that with Linux if it comes to it. I have just had too many problems with the older Dell machines to justify continuing to repair them. I have used CRT's with these, too but once again I don't keep any CRT. I stick to Trinitron rebadges and good ones like the Compaq Business ones if it's not based on a Sony CRT.

This all more or less happened, because of all the problems I had with a Dimension XPS 5150 with Win98 FE back in the day, since Win 9x was known to be very, very unstable because of 16/32-bit code. If the 16-bit code or underlying DOS code crashed, you got a BSOD since 16-bit is considered "real mode" and a real mode crash is fatal where a 32-bit crash isn't as bad. You lose the application that crashed, but not the system. Since this happened on a regular basis, so I also had to fix this on a regular basis. I also took it apart years back too. This all happened 16 years as of the initial wring, and now at least 20. Once it gets that far, it's no longer a hobby. It's a career.

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Femi will be eternally grateful.