This greeted me in my in box just now:
Adam,
We can do without some of the petty comments and downvotes and suggested closures from people such as yourself on Stackoverflow.
Thanks,
[person's name provided]
I've solicited clarification:
Sorry [person's name], which ones?
And, sorry if I've missed some significance that you have in the bigger scheme of things: are you [an] appointed arbiter of what is and is not reasonable on Stack Overflow? If so, posting from an official S/O address or at least having your position cited in your signature might lend your observations more credibilty.
But, either way, do please advise what's "petty", and example of an inappropriate downvote or question closure. I will assess what you say with an objective eye.
Cheers.
This is a bit more balanced than my first draft which was "Oh do f*** off you tiresome goit". However lest he has some semblance of a point, I shall keep my mind open and await this clarification. And I shall update this article with said clarification if it presents itself.
In the mean time, let me second-guess:
To which I commented:Why does the datepicker in my cfgridcolumn get half cut off
I made a cfgridcolumn with html formatting, and a date type, but half the date picker gets cut off. Any ideas why and how to fix this? Id post images but apparently I cant do that cause I don't have enough reputation.
Pictures? What good would that be? Where's the code that replicates / demonstrates what you're seeing? Have you looked at the CSS or the mark-up being rendered to see what the problem might be? What troubleshooting of your own have you done? Realistically, how do you expect anyone to help you based on your question which is - pretty much - "something doesn't work, but I won't show it to you. Now guess what the problem is"? Read this: http://blog.adamcameron.me/2013/09/short-self-contained-correct-compilable.html and the docs it links to. Then rewrite your question accordingly, pls.Cheers(This has received an upvote, btw)
This has a vote to close, but not from me. Although it'd be entirely reasonable if I did.
More likely it's this:
Auction end time triggering other actions
I am building an auction site using ColdFusion and MySQL. Here in New Zealand, the main auction site is www.trademe.co.nz. On that site, once an auction expires, it displays a status of "closing", which lasts for about a minute before the auction disappears. What sort of routine could be run, either in MySQL or ColdFusion or both, that will trigger off an auction expiry date being reached? I have heard of CRON, but from what I know this is similar to a ColdFusion scheduled task that runs at set periods. Also, it doesn't work with Windows.
BUT what seems to be needed here is something that picks up in REAL TIME that an auction has expired, rather than catching those auctions every minute, which would miss auctions that expired between times.
Hope that make sense. I am looking for an approach or way forward with this.
And I am one of the two votes to close on that one, for the very well documented reason:
Voting to close. The question is too broad. Start doing some research, try some things, and come back to us with questions when you get stuck (and perhaps read the posting guidelines too).This, I hasten to add, was not posted as a "answer", but just a comment against the question.
My reference to the posting guidelines was in reference to this: "What topics can I ask about here?" which details that Stack Overflow is about addressing issues people are having with specific problems, and I think the question above doesn't fall into that remit. If the question was revised to document what the person had tried and how it didn't work (you know, as per my suggestion), then it could be a good question. In theory. Although in practice it seems to just be a request for people to do the person's work for them.
I do not think my assessment here is "petty", and whilst mileage obviously varies with this sort of thing, I don't think my advice or actions are either unhelpful or unwarranted.
The response from the OP was this:
Tried plenty of things. Researched plenty of things. Thanks for your helpful comment though.
But no updates to the question explain what those might be: I really don't know how anyone is supposed to guess what they are. And if we were discussing petty tones, I think the person perhaps ought to be looking closer to home.
The thing is that Stack Overflow questions are supposed to be about specific coding problems. Not "how do I write the actual code". There's a burden on the questioner to demonstrate they've actually tried to help themselves before asking other people to help them. I am not meaning to suggest this person hasn't done their own research and experimentation, but it's a bit lazy for them to not include it in their question.
The email came in about 15min after that comment, and both the person asking the Stack Overflow question, and the emailer are both from NZ, so I suspect they're having a wee whine because the bad man wouldn't give them a lollipop.
Sigh.
Update:
Oh, my respondent sure didn't like this blog article. He got a wee bit personally rude about it. I'll spare you the details. I have referred him to Ray's comment below (which I have just followed up), as well as repeating my request for a constructive response on this matter he's raised with me. Suggesting if he cannot do that, we should call an end to our communications. Life's too short, eh?--
Adam
