Forums: Experts Exchange A+



I’ve been a big fan of forums for quite some time now. I used to buy expensive books and try to glean as much information from them as I could. However, as I started learning more I found that the books were less and less helpful.  Books are typically good for general introductory information. Many of them also have great tutorials to follow. But what do you do when you’re working on a project and you run into a problem that you just can’t solve?

My advice is to visit a forum. There are so many talented people out there who love to share their knowledge, why shouldn’t you?  When I was working on my graduate thesis in Flash I started getting heavily involved in a forum where I found that nine times out of ten my questions were answered by very knowledgeable friendly people. 

It’s been many years since that time, and while I’m still a true believer in forums, I found, what I believe to be, the mother-of-all forums. I’ve seen the forum before. It’s called:

 Experts Exchange

 http://www.experts-exchange.com  

I used to scoff at them because they charge to use their services, and see replies to questions that have been asked. But I sucked it up when I finally asked a question on a forum that no one could answer, and I signed up for a free seven day trial.  I very skeptically posted my question and waited. Only 17 minutes later my question was answered. I was floored. I decided I shouldn’t be too impressed–that it may have been an anomaly that my question had been answered so quickly and concisely, so I asked another question, and the same thing happened again.

Not only is response time lightening fast, but Experts Exchange has useful tool that let’s users validate answers when they are proven to work. This way, it’s easy to see which answers properly fixed the problem.  Since membership isn’t free, this probably isn’t something that you would want to renew all the time, but for projects that might take a month or so to complete paying for one month’s worth of service might be worth it. While only being able to see answers might not be worth the subscription, the ability to ask a question is.



One Response to “Forums: Experts Exchange A+”

1. encantamyKica says:

   August 20, 2009 at 7:38 pm

   Hi!
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   I spent a lot of time seeking for a forum relevant to my hobbies.
   Finally, I found this forum.

   Excuse me if this is a bad section to post , but I couldn’t find more relevant http://media.asicentral.com/KalliKeating -