Forums or Newsgroups are a great way to expand your community, contribute to the greater development community, hone your communication skills, and stay grounded. However, forums can have a frustrating dark side. From what I can tell, the dark side of forums stem from the wide diversity of users.

On Forums we have:

• the normal users
  
• the newbies
• the trolls
• the users suffering from information fatigue syndrome
• in some cases full time employees

As a forum contributor, I like to think that I'm giving something to the community, but some days I feel like I'm wasting my time and here's why.

Frustrating forum threads:

When contributors pass your words off as their own:

Amanda from Microsoft offers this bit of advice on 08-28-2007:


Which seems vaguely similar to something I might have said back on 12-07-2006:

When users are belligerent:

"Adam has so little time he can't even read your question ..." - Brian

When users want a quick fix or want you to do their work:

"please verify and do for me some work." - dagamishiva

It makes it all worth while when users are genuinely grateful for your advice and suggestions. In the end, forums (and helping people in general) is rewarding, and some forums that explicitly cover more advanced topics omit the frustrating chatter and facilitate professional level discussions.

What are your experiences with forums?