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I am a Ubuntu user for the past 9 months now. I am getting more and more knowledge on the platform. I am member of askubuntu for roughly 6 months. Most of the questions If not all that I encounter, I can not answer them.

Moreover, I generally have no question to ask. Its disturbs me, having nothing to offer.

How can I change and be more active?
seeking for advices, please.

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    You got some great answers so I won't make a new one but would add, edit stuff, answers and questions. All users make mistakes, even the best users, fix there spelling grammar and formatting. This helps the site and you get 2 rep (I think) for your edits. IMO This is the best thing low rep users can do to get more rep for privileges.
    – Mark Kirby
    Jul 21, 2015 at 12:30

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90 percent of the posted questions, I cannot answer from my own experience, because I never ran into problems described in the question; my network always works, my printer, screen; no problems ever. Therefore, many times, looking through the questions, I am pretty sure I answered my last question around here. Nevertheless, every time after a while, some question pops up that I have the feeling "it is mine" to answer.

If you really want to answer questions (which you should only do if you like to), you will find out there is a "kind" of question or subject you are interested in and you are good at.

At the same time, there are lots of ways you can do useful things; edit posts, give useful comments review posts, vote on good (or bad) posts etc.

The quality is more important than the quantity in my opinion. An example: I asked this question a while ago. If you look into the profile of the person who answered the question, you can see he only posted... one answer. I consider the answer however to be one of the very best answers to be found on this site :)

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  • OP does not have comment or downvote privileges. Jul 21, 2015 at 15:30
  • @tepples You are right about down votes, but it only takes 15 reputation to upvote :) Jul 21, 2015 at 19:35
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I have been askubuntu.com member for a year. At first it bothered me that I couldn't offer a lot of answer, more less upvoted answers. Especially with hardware-related questions. But as some Roman philosopher said, nothing is new under the sky. Yes, people ask specific questions, but often the diagnosing the cause and possible fixes are similar.

Among my favourite questions now are scripting questions. I actively search for such questions. Sometimes I find how other's code can be improved and sometimes come up with something of my own. More importantly, I try to have fun with it. And I improved mostly because I had fun with it, therefore was willing to spend time on those questions, and the experience from those questions carried over to future ones. Very often higher rep users would correct my code and ideas, and at first I was concerned about critique being the sign of something wrong or showing my low-level of knowledge, but over time I started taking critique more positively as a source of improvement. Because nobody here is getting paid to answer questions or critique other people's answers - we're all just people who invest their time because we like problem solving.

So basically what I am trying to say:

  • research other people's answers and questions, especially higher voted ones.
  • research on the web. Askubuntu isn't the only site where people go, but there's forums. Also, linux systems all have things in common.
  • find the type of question that you enjoy, and do your best to answer them.
  • Don't think you cannot answer a question. Find it out. Try researching first, think about it first.
  • never be discouraged by downvotes or critique, use them as source of motivation for learning and improvement

Lastly, Rome wasn't built in a day. Quality and knowledge both require time. Even super-duper writers had to go through bunch of crappy rough drafts before presenting masterpieces

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  • +1 for the fun part :) Jul 8, 2015 at 17:31

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