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In the last 24 hours, one user asked three questions all on the same topic - just progressing his/her project (batchable class) a bit further with each answer.

Because the user's name was simply usernnnnn - it was easy to miss that the same person was essentially asking us to do his/her work. (I figured this out after answering two of the three - sheesh)

I'm kind of wondering if there should be some stock response to this or not.

One could argue that "hey, we have a community and if the community wants to answer, no problem".

One could also argue that this is a slippery slope and the community doesn't want to get the reputation as "patsies" who do others' work for free.

With the upcoming moderator election, perhaps some of the candidates might have thoughts here.

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    good question.. believe this is a common issue in any discussion forum.. i hv seen this few times in salesforce answers & developer forums as well..
    – Vamsi Krishna Gosu
    Commented Oct 2, 2014 at 12:10

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Speaking from being the guy in that same position of asking dumb questions, to which many of you wrote my first triggers. When I first got here I really felt like I was annoying many of you with some of the stuff I would ask, but you guys dealt with my ignorance and I pushed on. Now I can pretty much stand on my own, and I will go into the IRC to ask my simple on liner questions and luckily this community is awesome.

As for the user in question, I have mixed feelings. At first I want to say "Hey, hes new lets help him." But another part of me thinks that "Why doesn't he at least change his name from "user"", and it also doesn't help that most of the Salesforce community lives here so when someone Google's a question it points them to here.

In the end I believe it should be a case by case basis, especially when dealing with new users, but the fact that many of them don't change their names tells me that they aren't looking to get involved with us or the community.

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It's a tricky one. On the one hand, you don't want to discourage a beginner, on the other, you don't want to be "doing someone's homework for them". In borderline cases like this, I usually let the community answer if they see fit.

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    Agreed. I typically look to see if flags are being raised to get a community consensus. There are situations where multiple questions like this could all be legit.
    – Matt Lacey Mod
    Commented Oct 2, 2014 at 6:43
  • I think this happens a lot more frequently than we may be aware of. A lot of the serial posts go unanswered in many of these cases with the 1st or last ones getting a fair amount of attention. Many of these intermediate posts need to be flagged as follow-up posts to posts that preceded them. Unless like @crop1645 you responded to an earlier post, you may not see the pattern emerging as the titles can be quite different from post to post. This user has accumulated a substantial reputation doing the same kind of thing.
    – crmprogdev
    Commented Oct 3, 2014 at 13:34
  • So, which question(s) should be flagged as duplicates in the case of multiple questions asked in serial fashion by the same individual? (i.e. identical code, progressed a bit closer to functioning)
    – Mark Pond
    Commented Oct 9, 2014 at 18:12
  • The one good thing about this is I doubt any college assigns Salesforce code for homework. They have pretty much standardized on Java with some C#, C++, and Lisp thrown in. Odds are you are helping someone's business.
    – user6861
    Commented Oct 16, 2014 at 14:45
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    On the contrary, @Snowman; I'm teaching a course at CSU Monterey Bay right now: Enterprise App Development in the Cloud using Salesforce. The students have been building an app over the last few weeks and will submit it tomorrow.
    – metadaddy Mod
    Commented Oct 17, 2014 at 17:42
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Low-quality questions that receive downvotes or get put on hold will result in a question ban for that user.

If the user is asking good questions, it should not affect the site at all except to provide more quality material as search fodder. If the user is asking poor questions, the problem should take care of itself as long as people are vigilant and use the tools StackExchange provides.

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