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There are two problems with this Meta question. The first is that the moderators are responsible for your question in some fashion - they are not. If anyone not responding to you, it is readers, not moderators (if a moderator offers an answer, then arguably they are doing it in their additional capacity as a reader).

You touch upon the second problem by acknowledging that you appear impatient, but I am not sure you fully appreciate it - if you take the view that readers "just don't care" about your questions, then you are mistakenly of the view that you are owed an answer. On Stack Overflow, I frequently see people mark their questions as "urgent" for presumably the same reason, and I would be intrigued as to how one comes by the idea that answers must be supplied to a poster in a particular time-frame. (I sometimes think this particular behaviour results from a cultural difference rather that people who are wanting to be rude).

It should go without saying that most helpers are volunteers, and they will answer questions they are interested in, at their leisure.

In some cases the issue will be that the question is not clear or is very niche. If you don't get an answer, add a bounty, or cross-post to another forum and add a link, so as not to duplicate answers. 

As an example of this, I recently asked a Stack Overflow question, which resulted in a similar (but not identical) question on Ask Ubuntu, which triggered a report on a project bug tracker, and for good measure I added one to an upstream bug tracker as well. I have hyperlinked between them so that if someone wishes to add a late answer, they can check the cross-post locations prior to spending too much effort on it.

There are two problems with this Meta question. The first is that the moderators are responsible for your question in some fashion - they are not. If anyone not responding to you, it is readers, not moderators (if a moderator offers an answer, then arguably they are doing it in their additional capacity as a reader).

You touch upon the second problem by acknowledging that you appear impatient, but I am not sure you fully appreciate it - if you take the view that readers "just don't care" about your questions, then you are mistakenly of the view that you are owed an answer. On Stack Overflow, I see people mark their questions as "urgent" for presumably the same reason, and I would be intrigued as to how one comes by the idea that answers must be supplied to a poster in a particular time-frame.

It should go without saying that most helpers are volunteers, and they will answer questions they are interested in, at their leisure.

In some cases the issue will be that the question is not clear or is very niche. If you don't get an answer, add a bounty, or cross-post to another forum and add a link, so as not to duplicate answers. As an example of this, I recently asked a Stack Overflow question, which resulted in a similar question on Ask Ubuntu, which triggered a report on a project bug tracker, and for good measure I added one to an upstream bug tracker as well. I have hyperlinked between them so that if someone wishes to add a late answer, they can check the cross-post locations prior to spending too much effort on it.

There are two problems with this Meta question. The first is that the moderators are responsible for your question in some fashion - they are not. If anyone not responding to you, it is readers, not moderators (if a moderator offers an answer, then arguably they are doing it in their additional capacity as a reader).

You touch upon the second problem by acknowledging that you appear impatient, but I am not sure you fully appreciate it - if you take the view that readers "just don't care" about your questions, then you are mistakenly of the view that you are owed an answer. On Stack Overflow, I frequently see people mark their questions as "urgent" for presumably the same reason, and I would be intrigued as to how one comes by the idea that answers must be supplied to a poster in a particular time-frame. (I sometimes think this particular behaviour results from a cultural difference rather that people who are wanting to be rude).

It should go without saying that most helpers are volunteers, and they will answer questions they are interested in, at their leisure.

In some cases the issue will be that the question is not clear or is very niche. If you don't get an answer, add a bounty, or cross-post to another forum and add a link, so as not to duplicate answers. 

As an example of this, I recently asked a Stack Overflow question, which resulted in a similar (but not identical) question on Ask Ubuntu, which triggered a report on a project bug tracker, and for good measure I added one to an upstream bug tracker as well. I have hyperlinked between them so that if someone wishes to add a late answer, they can check the cross-post locations prior to spending too much effort on it.

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halfer
  • 151
  • 5

There are two problems with this Meta question. The first is that the moderators are responsible for your question in some fashion - they are not. If anyone not responding to you, it is readers, not moderators (if a moderator offers an answer, then arguably they are doing it in their additional capacity as a reader).

You touch upon the second problem by acknowledging that you appear impatient, but I am not sure you fully appreciate it - if you take the view that readers "just don't care" about your questions, then you are mistakenly of the view that you are owed an answer. On Stack Overflow, I see people mark their questions as "urgent" for presumably the same reason, and I would be intrigued as to how one comes by the idea that answers must be supplied to a poster in a particular time-frame.

It should go without saying that most helpers are volunteers, and they will answer questions they are interested in, at their leisure.

In some cases the issue will be that the question is not clear or is very niche. If you don't get an answer, add a bounty, or cross-post to another forum and add a link, so as not to duplicate answers. As an example of this, I recently asked a Stack Overflow question, which resulted in a similar question on Ask Ubuntu, which triggered a report on a project bug tracker, and for good measure I added one to an upstream bug tracker as well. I have hyperlinked between them so that if someone wishes to add a late answer, they can check the cross-post locations prior to spending too much effort on it.